Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I can think of no reason Why the Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how Guy Fawkes became a symbol of revolution. I see all these anarchist types wandering around with their V masks, and I wonder if they even know who Guy Fawkes really is? It baffles me why a reactionary like Fawkes has been so heartily adopted by the American left. Why did the main character of V for Vendetta wear a V mask rather than a Che mask, or a Lenin mask, or even an Abbie Hoffman mask? Why Guy Fawkes, for the love of heaven?

The Gun Powder Plot was not, in any reasonable sense of the word, revolutionary. It was counter revolutionary in the strictest interpretation. The English Reformation was a social revolution that freed Britain from Papal tyranny. Under Queen Elizabeth I, the old Norman aristocracy lost their influence in favor of the new merchant class. Guy Fawkes himself was the son of an upwardly mobile middle class Protestant family. His father was a minor official in the Church of England, and his mother was the daughter of a dry goods merchant. Fawkes’s conversion to Catholicism may have stemmed from teen rebellion.

Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plotters wanted to destroy the new Church of England and return England to Papal control. How can this possibly be seen as revolutionary? Despite popular belief, Guy Fawkes was not the ringleader. That dubious honor went to a hereditary Catholic by the name of Robert Catesby. The Gunpowder Plot could have been thought up by Sir Edmund Blackadder. The conspirators rented a house next to the Winchester Complex, planning to mine beneath the House of Lords, pack it with gunpowder and blow it up during Parliament’s opening session. That way they could get King James, most of his court and family, and all the influential Protestant nobles. The opening of Parliament was delayed three times on account of the Black Plague, yet the tunnel was still not completed. So they rented the cellar beneath the House of Lords and stocked that with gunpowder instead.

If Robert Catesby was Blackadder, then Guy Fawkes was Baldric. Even though Fawkes knew that the plot had been revealed by a Catholic nobleman who was appalled at the plot, he tried to go through with it anyway. The guards were looking for him. They caught him in the cellar with 32 kegs of gunpowder and with fuses and matches in his pocket. He still tried to lie his way out of it. He was taken to the Tower of London and tortured while his buddies epically failed at getting away.

That was the historic Guy Fawkes. He was not the great defender of freedom as portrayed in V for Vendetta. He was an expendable flunky in a hare-brained plot to stop the wheels of progress and to return England to the “good old days” of Papal domination. The only advantage to that would have been to the Catholic nobles such as Robert Catesby, who wanted their old power and influence back. Fawkes himself became a figure of ridicule amongst the British, as shown by this rhyme.

Remember, remember the fifth of November

It’s Gunpowder Plot, we never forgot

Put your hand in your pocket and pull out your purse

A ha’penny or a penny will do you no harm

Who’s that knocking at the window?

Who’s that knocking at the door?

It’s little Mary Ann with a candle in her hand

And she’s going down the cellar for some coal

Guy Fawkes became identified with the Anarchist movement in the early 20th Century. British Anarchists put up posters with the modern stylized sketch of Fawkes, declaring that Guy Fawkes was the only man to enter Parliament with honest intent. This was, of course, using Guy Fawkes as a figure of ridicule. It was meant as a sort of black joke. Somebody lacking a sense of humor started taking the joke seriously, and the next thing we knew, we had V for Vendetta, and kids wearing Guy Fawkes masks in honor of a man who was trying to put Britain back under Papal control.

The irony is that these kids in their Guy Fawkes masks are pretty well accomplishing what Fawkes set out to do. They want to destroy government control without replacing the structures that have been destroyed. In this they actually share the same goals as their neocon opponents. The result is that money rushes in to fill the vacuum left by the lost structures. The more government is torn down, the more control falls into the hands of those who have the most money. This has been going on for twenty eight years and nobody has yet figured out that our loss of civil liberties is equal to the amount of government regulations that have been eliminated. The American left has not figured out that tearing down the government is a bad idea which will accomplish the opposite of what we want. The bad guy in V for Vendetta said at the people need to realize that the people need the government. This is very true. A dear friend of mine, who is a big V for Vendetta fan, adds that the government needs the people’s consent in order to govern. This is equally true. Government and the people exist in a symbiotic relationship. When that symbiosis fall out of balance, disasters like the present economic melt down occurs.

This leads us to the present cult of the Constitution. America has become as conservative as the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. The American left has not yet realized that by trying to return us to the original Constitution, they want to return us to the times when only property owners were citizens and could vote. Women were chattel, and African Americans were bought and sold like cattle. America has grown beyond those times, and trying to return us to them is only going to place Wall St. in charge of our lives. Looking backwards, even to the days of the American Revolution, is as reactionary as the Gunpowder Plot. There is also the truth that it is easier to destroy what we have in a vain attempt to make the clock move backwards, than it is to build. The more we destroy the government, the more of our civil liberties fall into the hands of Wall St. The only logical step is to rebuild the Government into what we want it to be.

This is perfectly Constitutional. The Constitution was never meant to be Holy writ, nor is it a mortal sin to change and revise it. The writers of the Constitution knew fully well that the world changes. They wrote the Constitution in order to deal with the changing conditions of their own time. They knew the world would continue to change, and built structures of change right into the Constitution. Hence the constitution was changed to allow all economic classes to vote. In 1971, Richard M. Nixon signed an amendment that changed the voting age from 21 to 18. Women won the vote in the early 20th Century. African Americans were freed by a Constitutional amendment. We have all the tools we need to change the government back into what we want it to be. All we need now is a plan.

Planning is the difference between revolutionaries like Jefferson and Burr and morons like Catesby and Fawkes. Rather than have some vague idea about returning the country to what Tom Jefferson wanted, we need a clear idea of what we want and need as a nation. There were many movements which had clear and precise goals as to what they wanted the government to be. The Labor movement, the Suffragist movement, and the Civil Rights movement are three clear examples of revolutionary movements that have changed the nation. Despite the best efforts of the neocons and their religious lapdogs, we still enjoy many of the benefits we gained from those movements.

Remember that the Constitution was written to be an instrument of the will of the people and not chains to bind us to a past age. Trying to return the Constitution to the days of the founders is like Guy Fawkes trying to return England to the tyranny of the Pope. It simply cannot be done. Maybe Guy Fawkes is really the appropriate symbol for the 21st Century American left, as they lead us to the future with their asses firmly in front of them.

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211 Comments on “A Penny For The Guy?”

I think he is seen as a revolutionary figure because he was willing to act on something he believed in. And, after all the years steeped in tradition of burning Guy dolls its almost impossible not to perceive him as a revolutionary, if not at least understandable.

the figure of a mask representing oppression does not say that one historical person carries
the intent of present, past, or future voices of people leaving their abusers. the mask personifies you, me, us, they, them, he, she but not it; in the relentless quest to end elites absorbing life out of actual people.

Tl;dr,
If you’re talking about the group Anonymous, it’s fairly simple. We all need to be anonymous; V for Vendetta showed a man fighting for great justice. His mask was just at the right place at the right time.
Google Fair Game.

Please do not misunderstand me. I have the greatest love for Anonymous. You guys give me a reason to hope. You are a high profile, highly organized team without leaders. You run yourselves so beautifully through consensus. I subscribe to your sites. I find them on stumble. I bookmark them. IMPO you are the future and God bless you.

My objection is not to Anonymous but to the masks you choose to wear. It puzzles the living hell out of me why you would wear the mask of a potential murderer and religious reactionary. Innocent people would have died during the gun powder plot. Had the plot succeeded, nothing good would have come of it.

I see the masks as a symbol of the reactionary element that has invaded America since Reagan was elected. Why not an Abby Hoffman mask or a MLK mask? Those were two revolutionaries who looked to the future.

On the contrary, read up on your history of the Russian Anarchists. They were willing to kill those who were hurting the people, only they had the integrity to allow themselves to be caught and tried for doing so.

There were no “people” back in those days. There were rigidly defined social classes and factions amongst the classes. Fawkes was willing to kill many innocent people so that the reactionary elements he identified with could return to power.

they don’t wear the mask for Guy Fawkes they wear it for V, and before you gripe some more about the movie, you said it you self it could’ve been anyone the mask just works better and the rhyme works with how V spoke. I also don’t even pretend to know anything about the real Guy Fawkes, but don’t say how inaccurate a fiction movie is and don’t tell others who they can idolize.

(incase you make fun of my grammer, i am only half paying attion to this review, just be glad I’m not calling you a nazi. oh and before I forget I only came here for the picture of the guy fawkes mask… and to complain, now.)

Guy Fawkes and his bunch had plenty good reason to revolt…. Prior to Guy Fawkes …1529 Henry VIII asked to divorce his wife so that he could have a son with another woman. The Pope declined, so Henry made up a new religion. When Elizabeth I came to power in 1558 she forced all remaining catholics underground. The people had to swear by her and the religion that she was the head of.
In 1605 guy Fawkes was fighting for what he believed was right…..freedom of religion.

I wouldn’t say that the means at which they tried to attain this freedom was just. But def understandable.

Henry VIII did not “make up” a new religion. Henry joined with the growing Protestant movement. In creating the new Protestant state religion, Henry confiscated the properties of those Catholic orders who opposed him and used them for public buildings. Henry VIII’s reformation saw the beginning of Britain’s social service structure. Any noble who wished to could remain Catholic and keep his lands and properties. All he had to do was agree not to oppose the reformation. It was a Catholic nobleman who exposed the Gunpowder Plot for the madness that it was.

You forget that there were two British Monarchs between Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The first was King Edward who was a sickly child and did not last very long. His reign was marked by an internal dispute between the old Norman nobility and the new Capitalist nobility. The Capitalists were Britain’s future while the Norman Catholics were trying to make the clock move backwards, and reestablish the old land based nobility.

Then there was Edward’s successor, Queen Mary I, who was also known as “Mad” Mary and “Bloody Mary”. Mary was a fanatical Catholic who returned Catholicism to Britain and led a bloody persecution against the Protestant Church. Had Mary not died during a fit of madness, there would have been a civil war in Britain.

When Elizabeth I took the throne, the people had spoken. They were in open revolt against the returning Catholic Church. Elizabeth did not force the Catholics underground, she saved their lives. She gave them the opportunity to leave the country or swear fealty to her and to accept that the Anglican Church was the state religion. Quite a few Catholics accepted that deal.

Catholics were by no means underground by the reign of James I. Things had settled down, but the memory of Mary’s persecution was still fresh. The Gunpowder Plot itself became one of the factors that brought peace between Britain’s Catholics and Protestants. Not only did a Catholic noble foil the plot, but Guy Fawkes became the focus for anti-Catholic anger. Guy Fawkes day is the day that the British celebrate their independence from Rome.

/The Gunpowder Plot itself became one of the factors that brought peace between Britain’s Catholics and Protestants./

Is that not at least the basic idea?
In the end if we could get what we want and live in peace… Live and let live.

Control the ravenous appetite of corporations’ greed, staunch the cavalier capitalistic waste and pay heed to the dangers created on Earth from both.
Wouldn’t hurt for people to be less distracted with the media addiction while we’re at it.

Maybe, just maybe, he was trying to start new. Wipe out the tyrannical monarchy that plagued England since the dawn of the nation. Maybe he saw a chance to wipe it out and start over. His plan was never seen through so we will never know what the next step was. Maybe he had democracy on his mind? We’ll never know b/c history is written by those who win.
Also, why do you people still celebrate the Monarchy? They’re a symbol of the past and all the tyranny that came w/ it? Why not just let them fade into the past like the rest of the worlds tyrants? They murdered and controlled and kept people from true freedom, yet England holds them in high regard. Please explain why this is? America broke away from England and we realized the tyranny and over here we have little to no respect for them, we all question why they still exist in your society.

Have you actually read the article? Guy Fawkes was not the head of the Gunpowder plot, that dubious honor belonged to Robert Catesby. His purpose was to end all of the social advances that came about during the Elizabethan era, and turn back the clock to the good old days of the old Norman Nobility. Part of their motivation was they wanted to stop England from trading with Turkey so they could join a crusade. Another part was to return England to feudal times and end the rise of the merchant class. Be happy this was tried by a bunch of knotheads. Had they succeeded, they would have slowed the changes that still had to come about to allow democracy to happen.

The Guy Fawkes mask, apart from being much easier to find than your suggestions of a MLK or Abbie Hoffman mask, symbolizes counter culture and rebellion regardless of your opinions of the Gunpowder Plot – especially after V for Vendetta came out.

It’s really a pretty logical choice. I don’t think the average guy would pick up on a motif of rebellion when looking on a crowd of protesters wearing MLK masks, much less Hoffman masks (most people probably don’t know who he is, much less what he looks like).

I’m also a little confused on your tangential rantings about the “American left…tearing down the government…” Apart from being off topic, it also doesn’t make much sense…generally the left builds up government structure while the right crusades for less interference.

P.S. You sound like a condescending douchebag when you keep addressing people as “kids.” Especially when the answer to your huge rant is so simple – Guy Fawkes masks are easy to find.

The Guy Fawkes mask, apart from being much easier to find than your suggestions of a MLK or Abbie Hoffman mask, symbolizes counter culture and rebellion regardless of your opinions of the Gunpowder Plot – especially after V for Vendetta came out.

So what you are telling me here is that the choices for Counter Culture symbols are chosen by the very marketing companies that you are against? This certainly explains Obama.

I’m also a little confused on your tangential rantings about the “American left…tearing down the government…” Apart from being off topic, it also doesn’t make much sense…generally the left builds up government structure while the right crusades for less interference.

It’s the whole Libertarian idiocy that somehow small government makes us freer when in actual fact it takes away our powers to stop corporate criminals from stealing our freedoms. The crooks in charge would not have gotten this far if both the left and the right had not drank the small government kool-aid and we kept the laws that limited corporate power.

I have worked very hard to grow this old, and it is easy to be condescending to a bunch of people who are following corporate trends and claiming they belong to the counter culture.

really – where are you coming up with the american left using guy fawkes as some sort of symbol? i am an american left winger and, trust me, guy fawkes is not used as a role model or some sort of symbol for the democrats. libertarians are not left. and if i hear one more person use the phrase “drinking the kool-aid” i’m going to freaking scream. ironic how people that are bitching about how everyone else act like “sheeple” are all using the some worn out saying…

Good Morning, Jack, and welcome to “A Penny for the Guy” and thank you for bringing something of substance to the table. I agree with you, Libertarians are not left. They just think they are. Rather than saying “Left”, do you think I should edit the post and put in Libertarians instead? I think that was what I meant. (After all, I wrote this years ago.) And really, isn’t the idea of a bunch of people wearing the same masks and repeating the same tired cliche’s hilarious?

Whooooa! I live in the United States of America- where being liberal supports government regulation of corporations and supporting civil liberties. The left is progressive and supports government regulation- note that Obama is showered with names like Socialist, not Capitalist- while right is conservative and supports capitalism and free market over government regulation.

Since right and left seem to carry contrary meanings between us (something I find odd, but not impossible) allow me to express that I agree with many of your points, but you seem to be firing at the wrong people. I would guess by the names you target that you are a Republican, or Independent. If you only expressed your beliefs, I would think you to be a Democrat.

I miss the good ol’ days when at least the politicians were genius in what they did.
It seemed the Industrial Revolution swept the genius from the political system, and ne’er did it return.

Interesting argument.
It is vital that we preserve the Constitution and Bill of Rights as they stood but with modern egalitarianism. Certainly we don’t want to strip women and minorities of their rights; nor do we wish to yield our rights in a misguided attempt to preserve social order. A balance must be struck and enough order maintained to sustain Liberty.

Do you mean preserve the Constitution and Bill of Rights or do you mean resist change? The Constitution lasted this long because it was a document that was written to be changed. Change does not mean “preserving the social order”. Look at what is happening to the health care debate. Fighting change is dangerous to the social order. Change means growing and evolving according to everything we have learned since the Constitution had been written.

In my oppinion on this fictional movie is that the character V stands for the idea of change. People who are used to what they have, lets say government, are afraid to change it or they are just lazy. I believe Guy Fawks acted in his own beliefes and what he thought needed to be done. The fact that remains is that we do not know this man or the people involved, we were not there when all this was going on and who knows how much of it was added. If the man who made the movie believe that Guy Fawks tried to change the government for the good then using Guy Fawks was genious. And did you think that Guy Fawks and the others envolved were trying to destroy something unfair and make it into something for every one?

Sorry, Zac, but we do indeed know who Fawkes was, and we do indeed know the people involved in the Gunpowder Plot and we are also capable as intelligent human beings, to understand their motivations.

The Gunpowder Plot was simply another upper-class power struggle. The new Middle Class was becoming the Royalty of England. Under Henry VIII you were more likely to be knighted for bringing money to the crown than for being a soldier. The day of the soldier was over and the days of the Capitalists were coming.

We know from their journals and their records that Fawkes and his pals were not happy that the old Catholic nobility were being put aside for the progressive Capitalists. We know from the words they left behind that they were trying to move back the clock and place their own families back to the head of the food chain. They were also very unhappy about King James I, as he was a Scot and not friendly to the Catholic nobility. As King of Scotland, James became a Calvinist, and a big supporter of the Capitalist merchants.

Fawkes intended to kill the king and the Protestant Nobility in order to return the Catholics to power. How would it have benefited anybody to have the Pope once more in charge of England? No, Fawkes and his buddies were simply a bunch of imbeciles who thought they could make the clock move backwards. All they cared about were themselves and their own fortunes.

I see, all the places that i’ve looked for info say nothing of this, were do you get your information? And If you dont recall from the movie V stands for an idea, not a man from the 1600s, Why do you care so much as to why they use Guy Fawks? I’m not trying to sound rude or impolite i’m simply interested.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on Guy Fawkes. There are also some excellent hard copy sources on the subject. Faith and Treason by Antonia Frasier is a very good book on the subject. You can find it at your local library.

Why do I care? I do not. I simply find it hilarious that the American “left” has adopted such a reactionary for their idol. Fawkes was trying to bring back “the good old days” of papal theocratic oppression. This goes hand in hand with libertarians wanting to bring back “the good old days” of free market oppression.

That just goes to show that there is no real left in this country. America is flying with two right wings. That’s why we are always going in circles.

I have to butt in and express a few of my own thoughts, here, which are based more upon observations, rather than academics.

RIGHT VS LEFT… LEFT VS RIGHT

This whole idea is moot, to begin with. This battle has waged on for centuries and neither “side” has truly served us, as a nation, for the simple reason that both views are biased and (based on this fact) both are inherently wrong. There are no “bipartisan” solutions to our societal woes and as long as we remain committed to that approach, we will continue to fail and we will continue to point fingers back and forth.

Politics do not serve the masses. Politics serve the masters.

Ever hear the phrase “Divide and conquer”?

How about this one?

“Don’t mind the men behind the curtain.”

If there is to be someone behind the curtain, with true intentions to do “for the good of all”, then it would need to be a scientifically based, non-politically (non-monetary) driven group of representatives. It’s all about motives and political, governmental motives are inherently corrupt, due to bias, period.

We’d have much better odds if we modified our motives and (resultantly) the type of people we choose to represent and lead us. Until then, it will continue to be a perpetuation (or worse yet, a proliferation) of what we currently have.

Albert Einstein is generally considered to be one of the great minds of human history. Here are a couple of his quotes, which may indeed apply to our current system of government:

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over (Democrat) and over (Republican) again, expecting different results”

and

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used, when we created them.”

ANONYMOUS AND THE G. FAWKES MASKS

Why the writers or producers of the film “V for Vendetta” choose Guy Fawkes is really a matter that should be addressed to them, personally, rather than to the group emulating their gesture. They may have chosen to use white pillow cases with the eyes cut out, if that image had not already been assigned such a stigma.

The point is that the movie promoted two very relatable images.

A. The mask itself is a fairly generic image, as very few people have a clue about who Guy Fawkes was or his role in that bit of history. Regardless, according to accounts, that mask looks nothing like Guy Fawkes.

The mask is in sync with Anon’s premises (also drawn from the movie). “I could be anyone.” “Behind this mask is an idea!”

B. The imagery created during the climactic scene, where the masses appeared, all wearing the same mask was of “oneness” as well as anonymity.

Anonymity + strength in numbers = the inexorable expression of an idea.

Add all of this to the commercial availability of the mask, after the movie was released and it was a pretty clear choice.

The Anonymous organization emulates the film “V for Vendetta” and it’s premises, not the historical figure of G. Fawkes and if I were to guess the motives behind the choice made for the film itself, I would venture to say that the IDEA of a man exhibiting such self-sacrificing conviction (regardless of his true motives) is worth special consideration and it quite possibly
(actually, evidently) may serve as a grand motivator.

First of all, I am in your debt. If you actually get Faith and Treason from the library, you will make me the happiest man on earth. If just one person cracks open a fucking book from something I wrote, I will die a happy man. I will know I have done one positive thing in my life.

To define the Left, I mean anybody who opposes this present neocon government. There is no organized resistance to to the faction of Ayn Rand fanatics who currently infest the halls of power. Instead we have a left wing fascist movement that is deifying the Founders as if they were divine prophets and not ordinary human beings.

Well you see my friend, I’am a glotten for knoledge and even if I didnt have the pleasure of conversing with you I still would have looked deeper into the Gunpowder plot. I’m in high school and I highly doubt that my library will carry Faith and Treason but I intend on getting it some how, you said you are in my debt but I believe you are mistaken, thanks to you I can expand my knoledge on this matter. I’m not sure about most people but I prefer to know what I’m talking about in a conversation or debate.

Now this makes me quite furious.
You have obviously no idea who Guy Fawkes was, or what he stood for. First off, the reason for his conversion to a catholic, was because after his father died, his mother remarried with a catholic, and Fawkes eventually became a catholic himself.
This is when he saw how unfair catholics were being treated, they where tortured, hunted down and killed by the king. This was what the whole gunpowder plot was all about, freedom and safety for the catholics, being free to believe as you choose yourself.

If anything, Fawkes was revolutionary.

Oh, and I’m no punker, I don’t get those kids. They all claim to be revolutionary rebels, while they all end up being simply rebels, standing for something they have absolutely no idea about.
Most punkers don’t even know what anarchy means.

Taking a quick stab in the dark, I bet you are Catholic. Forgive me for disagreeing with Church doctrine, but the British Reformation ended long before the gunpowder plot. The persecutions you are talking about occurred under Queen Mary. (AKA Bloody Mary or Mad Mary.) You also have it backwards. It was the Catholics beating up on the Anglicans.

When Mary died raving in her lunacy, her half sister Elizabeth took the throne. She reestablished the Church of England but did so without beating up any Catholics. By the time James I came to the throne in 1603, The Church of England was firmly established. Catholicism became a minority religion and Catholic noblemen kept their titles and lands by agreeing to disagree with the Anglican Church.

There were still those Catholics who longed for the good old days when commerce was held in contempt and nobility was proven through being able to beat somebody to death with a broadsword. They wanted to return to a simpler time when peasants died in the fields instead of in factories, and merchants turned their goods over to the nobles for the remuneration of not getting killed.

That Fawkes’ step-father may have been Catholic shows that there was no Catholic persecution during the reign of James I. If you were Jewish or accused of being a witch, you were shit out of luck, but you were perfectly safe as a Catholic.

The Gunpowder Plot was an idiot idea made up by reactionary morons. Whatever else Guy Fawkes may have been, smart is was not one of them. He was the Baldric of the Reformation.

Could you show me sources for that? Most I’ve seen claim she died of uterine cancer. A false pregnancy revealed a giant tumor in there. All the sources I’ve seen agree she was as crazy as a honey badger on angel dust.

Just thought I’d toss in my two cents here. I was wondering myself why Anonymous, and others, use the Guy Fawkes mask and as best I can tell, as stated previously, it’s more so from the V for Vendetta movie.

I’m not 100% familiar with the Guy Fawkes story but from what I’ve read here it’s possible Alan Moore used it for V because V was trying to topple the government in the graphic novel/movie without a structure to replace it. V wanted anarchy, not order. Usually when someone plans to topple a government they have a plan for order in the aftermath. When Napoleon rode into the Parliament Buildings of France and told the government to GTFO he had a plan. When America revolted against King George III, they had a plan. There was always a new government waiting to enter from stage left as soon as the stage was clear. V didn’t, nor did he want that. The leaders of the Gunpowder Plot, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t have a plan either, they just wanted the current leaders gone.

So Alan Moore and David Lloyd wrote V for Vendetta, using the Guy Fawkes mask, which eventually became a movie. I guess he could have used any number of different masks (why not the Nixon mask that bank robbers always wear?) but he chose Guy Fawkes for whatever reason. I believe the main reason for the mask following through into the real world is because of the one scene from the movie where the entire population of London is out in Guy Fawkes masks. They truly were anonymous, I bet even the extras used for the scene wouldn’t be able to pick themselves out of that crowd, let along recognize anyone else. I also thumbed through the Graphic Novel and noticed that that never happened, so you can probably thank whoever worked on the movie adaptation.

I may have more info on why Alan Moore and David Lloyd chose the Guy Fawkes mask for V coming later. I just discovered the GN has an article written by Alan Moore in 1983, about his then work in progress, from Warrior Magazine #17. I’ll read through that and add any information I find that might shed some light on the subject.

I would love to know why Moore and Lloyd chose Guy Fawkes. In a historic POV it is a totally bogus choice, but in an artistic sense I have to admit that the stylized Guy Fawkes face was too dramatic to resist.

Once again, you are right about Catesby and his comic opera cohorts not having a plan. They didn’t even have a clue. Had they by some ill chance succeeded, the Catholic League was waiting in the wings with the military ready to march into England to impose their pope chosen monarch.

The pope was going nuts over England. Not only had Queen Elizabeth imposed a Protestant Church on England, she had opened trade with the Ottoman Empire and Algiers. England was growing rich selling the Muslims refined metal, (mostly tin.) armor and gun powder.

This made it impossible for Rome to proclaim another crusade. Now the Turks had the same weapons as the Christians. The pope was seeing Catholic influence in the world decline, and the Medicis eventually had to put their own guy in as pope in order to compete with England for that lucrative Arabian trade.

You are also right that the libertarian anarchists also do not have a plan. However, I do assure you that EXXON and Haliburton do have a plan, and there is nobody on Earth praying for a Libertarian victory than Dick Cheney.

I do hope you let us know what you find in that Warrior article. I would be very interested.

Time to shed some light on the subject. I read the article last night and will include the relevant bits and some paraphrasing (Moore tends to ramble sometimes).

Referring to a submission made to Hulk Monthly (UK) circa 1978: “My idea concerned a freakish terrorist in white-face makeup who traded under the name ‘The Doll’ and waged war upon a Totalitarian State sometime in the late 1980s.”

The idea was rejected until Lloyd, whom he’d met working on Doctor Who Monthly, called him up to work on a Pulp-style comic years later for Warrior magazine. The idea of “The Doll” resurfaced and he began to draw ideas from: “Orwell. Huxley. Thomas Disch. Judge Dredd. Harlan Ellison’s ‘”Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman.’ ‘Catman’ and ‘Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World’ by the same author. Vincent Price’s Dr Phibes and Theatre of Blood. David Bowie. The Shadow. Nightraven. Batman. Fahrenheit 451. The writings of New Worlds scool of science fiction. Max Ernst’s painting ‘Europe After The Rains.’ Thomas Pynchon. The atmosphere of British Second World War films. The Prisoner. Robin Hood. Dick Turpin…”

The original costume was a black jumpsuit with something resembling a ski mask with a somewhat military style ball cap and a belt with straps that formed a V on his chest. Deciding it was too much like the traditional super hero genre he wanted to avoid he scrapped that idea and they two of them were stumped.

Moore then got a letter from Lloyd and transcribed it into the article. He points out that Lloyd’s handwriting is illegible on good days so there is some missing, only part of a line in the relevant section though:

“Re. The script: While I was writing this, I had this idea about the hero, which is a bit redundant now we’ve got [can’t read the next bit] but nonetheless… I was thinking why don’t we portray him as a resurrected Guy Fawkes, complete with one of those papier mâché masks, in a cape and conical hat? He’d look really bizarre and it would give Guy Fawkes the image he’s deserved all these years. We shouldn’t burn the chap every Nov. 5th but celebrate his attempt to blow up Parliament!”

So more than likely they knew the folklore surrounding Fawkes more than the real history and just decided that it would give that odd look they wanted.

This might also be of some interest:
“Alan Moore had this to say about the use of the Guy Fawkes motif adopted from his comic V for Vendetta, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: ‘I was also quite heartened the other day when watching the news to see that there were demonstrations outside the Scientology headquarters over here, and that they suddenly flashed to a clip showing all these demonstrators wearing V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks. That pleased me. That gave me a warm little glow.'”
-Wikipedia (sourcing Entertainment Weekly website)

I take umbrage with your suggestion that Henry VIII was a conciencious part of the reformation. His only problem with Rome was the Pope’s denial of annulment when Henry wanted to play musical beds till he had a son. He figured as king he was entitled to engage in serial monogamy without any pesky moral criticisms. Guy may not have been a nice person, but if you wish to vilify him you should not glorify such an amoral pig as Henry in the same text. The way England treated Catholics in that age it is hardly supprising that Catesby and his compatriots reacted the way they did. I disagree with their method, but the concept of passive resistance was unknown till the 20th century and that is why people like Ghandi and King are as deservedly revered and noteworthy as they are. Oh …… and I doubt that the concept of passive resistance would have worked in Guy’s time anyhow. Seems not to work in the absence of mass media. Guy is popular now because he stood up for and was tortured for a class of people who were horribly oppressed. In my family tree we trace it back to one little 3 year old boy who hid in in his mother’s petticoat when brit authorities broke into the house and summarily dragged all male members of the family out of the house and hung them from nearby trees for the crime of harboring a priest. Today, politicians seem to have drifted from oppressing any one class of people to simply doing whatever they need to do to ensure their place supping at the public trough. Liberal – Conservative, Right – Left, THEY ALL HAVE ABDICATED THEIR DUTY TO PUBLIC SERVICE. My roots are Catholic. I am a practicing non denominational Protestant. My opinion is not clouded by that issue. You obviously hate Catholics and allow that hate to color your opinion. You also equate Abby Hoffman with MLK. That really shows your intellectual inadequacies. One a martyr for social equality regardless of the color of ones skin. The other a champion of a complete lack of moral order, and rampant use of poison to bend mind and body. Oh and when you piss and moan about the gunpowder plotters lack of thought or planning about filling the power void they would create, you fail to show the plan Abby Hoffman had other than getting high and fucking whoever would get naked with him. His avowed political bent was anarchy for its own sake.

You are an idiot spouting for the leftist portion of the politicians all of whom (left and right) have sold out the people whom they are supposed to represent.

I would never advocate violence as a social statement. I do however sympathize with it in that historical context. And when I see how often average people are victimized by our politicians and our merchant class and then watch as the politicians divide us and conquor us so they can keep their power and status I mtend to show my sympathy quite vocally.

Sorry, Fred, but the gunpowder plot happened 57 years after the reign of Henry VIII. Elizabeth ended the persecutions in order to stabilize her government. The Church of England was reestablished for economic reasons. Henry VII was the first to begin ennobling merchants. By the time of Henry VIII there were enough merchant lords to support Henry in his break from Rome.

The new middle class was not happy with Rome. Rome with its taxes on wealth and usuary laws, were holding back profits. So while Henry played musical beds, his middle class merchant nobles supported his break from Rome. This is what made England the giant it became in later years.

Under Elizabeth, trade became the crown’s chief source of income. Not being subject to Rome and Rome’s idiot crusades, Elizabeth was the first to open trade routes to the Muslim East. Rome was prevented from spreading its influence by the sword, because England was selling arms to the Turks, making them the equal to Europe.

Despite Henry VIII and his persecutions, The British reformation was a step forward for freedom as a whole. Adam Smith and the entire Capitalist movement came out of the British Reformation. Britain was soon joined by the Protestant German States, and Capitalism, the last great giant leap for human freedom took hold. Catesby and Fawkes wanted to prevent that and put Europe back under Catholic control.

First off, I’m not a catholic. I despise religion, and everything associated with it.

Oh and yes, of course the catholics beat the protestants before the protestants came to power, and it was also the other way around when the protestants came to power.

And yes, the people at the top, plotted the gunpowder plot to further their own power.

But the reason why Fawkes became a man associated with freedom and heroism, is because he stood for freedom, he wanted everyone to be treated the same way, regardless of background and beliefs.

Now I’m quite sure you are a christian, seeing as you are so on the protestants’ side on the matter, you asked me if I was a catholic like it was a bad thing, and you’re arrogant. Religious people often are quite arrogant.

Now, if you are a christian, I’d like you to shut up and stop being such a smart-ass. A man that believes in a old, long bearded wizard, that supposedly lives in the sky, obviously aren’t intelligent.

Sorry, Johnathon, but the freedom of which you speak did not exist in the days of Guy Fawkes. It took the rise of capitalism to teach humanity those concepts. Catesby and Fawkes were fighting against the idea of freedom. They wanted to bring Britain back to the good old days when they could kill a merchant for his goods instead of having to be polite to him at court. Fawkes fought against the German Capitalists for the Catholic League, who wanted a United Europe for their Pope’s next crusade.

And for the record, I am not religious. Read other parts of my blog. I am an atheist Marxist pinko, and my view is shaped by the dialectic and not the Bible.

I am going to throw in my 2 cents here. I am Pagan Clergy! Just to get that out of the way for people accusing people of taking one side or the other based on what religion they are. Second, History is always written by the people in power at the time! So what if they used the mask in the movie! Its a Movie! Get over it! When I was in school Christopher Columbus was the first to discover America. It was “Historical Fact”! Now we know better. So I always wonder how much written History is fact or fiction! Its funny how in the movie the government was controlling every thing on tv. Well Our tv is being controlled. How many marches on the Government did you see over the last 8 years actually make it to the news????? It was happening! In a world of tech we are fed information and very rarely get the unbiased whole truth! So even if the movie used a not so good icon to get a movement started in the people to get off there butts and do something about all the BS thats been going on most of my life than SO BE IT!!! Our Government only follows its own laws when it suits it!! If our own Government wont follow the laws whats the point of having them?? Blast me all you want about anarchy and chaos. I know a few leaders that should have been hun for treason and have not been!! And that my dear Sr is a known Fact!

So, Nicole, you are pagan clergy. I happen to be an atheist. What do the two of us have in common? Why the Reformation. Thanks to Martin Luther, you can be out of the broom closet and I can declare that there are no gods, and we will be neither jailed nor tortured.

Social Evolution is like biological evolution. It is a long and slow process that can centuries. Martin Luther nailed his protests against the Catholic Church on the doors of his church. Henry VIII used that event for his political advantage.

The result was that new ideas flooded into Europe. Without the pope in the way, there was nothing to keep England from opening trade with the Muslim east. Along with silk, spices, and steel, British traders came back with new ideas. Algebra was introduced to England during the reign of James I. This gave rise to a renaissance in scientific thought and resulted in Isaac Newton changing the face of science forever. Aristotle was also introduced to the West after an absence of over 1000 years. Plato and his philosopher king was abandoned in favor of Athenian democracy. Free thought, free inquiry, and free speech were all concepts that came into fashion thanks to the Reformation.

History is more than the actions of governments. History is the study of forces that changed the entire world. By studying history we can trace back the ideas that we hold today and see where they come from. This is as true for the good ideas as the bad ideas. We can study the progression of ideas that led to changes in government as well as the progression of ideas that led to dictatorships. Hopefully we can learn to foster the good ideas and abandon the bad ones.

The future can be a scary place and there are plenty of forces out there that hold us back. Here in 21st Century America it is the religious right and the libertarian movement. Both wish to move this country to a time in the past that never really existed. By the reign of James I, the old Catholic monarchy had become “the good old days.” Catesby and Fawkes were pursuing an idealized goal that never existed in history.

Here in the 21st Century we have our own reactionaries who want to return the US to a time that never existed. One such group are the libertarians. As Catesby and Fawkes idealized Catholic rule, the Libertarians idealize the founding fathers. I suspect the founders of this nation would be very much surprised at the opinions and beliefs attributed to them. Like the religious right, the libertarians have a sacred book which is considered to be divinely inspired. That book is the Federalist Papers, which they confuse with the Constitution whenever convenient.

So this is why I am very amused that the libertarians have adopted Guy Fawkes as their hero. Fawkes was also a reactionary using an absurd plan plan to return England to an idealized point in time. Fawkes and his friends felt that Rome would grant them freedoms that Rome never granted to anyone. Like Fawkes and Catesby the libertarians are a bunch of fuck-ups who have no idea of what it would cost them if they did have their way.

RE: “Social Evolution is like biological evolution. It is a long and slow process that can centuries.”

I would just like to point out that social evolution is correlated to technological advances and the tools provided therefrom. I would even say that social evolution now has become exponentially faster.

There are fanatics in all paths. And I totally agree with what you just said. It seems things always swing from one extreme to the next before they come back to the middle. Like I for one dont think any one with a religious agenda should ever be in political office! But I doubt that will ever happen. How ever some parts of the Constitution should be preserved as they are timeless! Like Freedom of Speech, which allows us to speak our minds like we are here. And Of course Freedom of Religion or lack of Religion ;-) Yes the Constitution needs to be preserved and yes it needs to evolve to be relevant to current times. But Seriously the Constitution does not mean any thing if the Gov can violate it when ever it sees fit!

Actually, one space versus two spaces is a practical stylistic “change,” not compositional. It’s due to the fact that print is no longer typeset. Instead, print form is created digitally and manual typesetting is pretty much extinct.

Of course, I find it ironic that someone snarking about grammar, failed to use it properly in their comment (capitalization). LOL

My problem is a combination of dyslexia and severely bad eyesight. I have a problem reading digital text, so I work a little harder to put it into the double space format in consideration of other visually impaired people. It sucks growing old. As far as the capitalization is concerned, it got past my wife, who is a professional. :)

The government has been able to put the Constitution aside anytime it wants to for two reasons. The first is British Common Law and the other is custom. British Common Law was established by John Adams and John Jay as a means of circumventing the Constitution. Both Adams and Jay were royalists who very much apposed the version of the Constitution that was ratified. Adams and Jay wanted to see the Senate be a hereditary position and Adams wanted the president to have all the trappings and powers of the British monarch. Common law was established to circumvent populism. Common law gave judges the same powers as an earl or viscount. A judge could make a precedent that violates the constitution and that precedent remains as law until challenged. Illegal wiretapping has been fought since the Nixon Administration. It is clearly unconstitutional, but it remains due to common law.

Custom is the other means the Constitution is circumvented. John Adams began the customs that place church over the Constitution. Under Adams, the president became a religious leader as well as a secular leader. The president had to have been a white Christian due to custom and not the constitution. The president proclaims holidays in imitation of the British monarch. The Christianoid churches feel that they are the supreme law in this nation because they were for over 200 years. That was not constitution, that was custom.

Last time I checked the constitution said “all men are created equal” not “enslave all black sub-humans”. All you do is prove how ignorant and stupid you are when you make false claims about important things. If we ran everything exactly how the Constitution says it wouldn’t be perfect but we’d be a hell of a lot better off than we are today. Then figure out what needs fixing.

Asking a libertarian if he actually read the constitution is like asking a Southern Baptist if he read the Bible. Of course you wouldn’t be a libertarian if you actually read the Constitution. The original Constitution refused to regulate African Slavery. It took no less than three amendments to eliminate slavery in the US. The last one was signed in the 1960s. It also took a Constitutional Amendment to grant women the vote.

If you actually read the Constitution, you wouldn’t be a libertarian asshat. If you read the Constitution you would know that regulating businesses and taxation are perfectly legal. They even wrote tariffs into the document. As a whole, the Constitution is a very vague document that gives a lot of latitude on its interpretation.

RE: “Asking a libertarian if he actually read the constitution is like asking a Southern Baptist if he read the Bible.”

I laughed.

The way I was taught about the egalitarianism of these documents is that the definition of man was in the concept of “common man”, much as I think of the collective “one”, “they”, and “you” in modern English or the German collective “man”.
When they formed such proclamations, it was with the understanding that “man” meant “white male”. Maybe the way “American” is treated now, as if it somehow means ‘a white, Anglo-Saxon patriot who claims citizenship to the United States of America’.

Libertarian: (n) a person who advocates liberty, especially with regard to thought or conduct.

I don’t see anything about constitutional purity…I suppose I would consider myself a libertarian. I do not believe in total Constitutional purity but in the restriction of government. I believe that a utopic anarchy would be the ideal but sadly we do not live in an ideal world and therefore must settle for an isolationist democracy.

Libertarians are a astro-turf movement partially founded by a PR weasel named Karl Hess. While the libertarians claim they are for liberty, it is for a specific concept of liberty they attribute to the Federalists. It is, of course, total bullshit, and created to prepare the country for Reagan.

just my 1 cent. I noticed that you usally answer by refrazing history. I mean, let`s say you get one question, and answer that by telling all the history you know. But as it is my first view at your post, you have no autority in history field for me. I dunno, just think you should more link to other more reliable source of information, raver then refrazing it yourself. That should not be confused with your opinion on a historic event. If something was interesting for me, I intended to check it outside classroom, even if you`re any kind of teacher.

but all the conversation about vendetas mask and Guy Fawkes connection, that has been here around, i think it`ll do for me.

You are absolutely right. I should link to more reliable sources of information. I wish I could. The problem is that it is very hard to do on the internet where there are no standards of truth or reliability. A PR weasel can enter a false history article much more easily than a PH.D. in history. The PR weasel will get paid for it. The PH.D will not.

The PR weasel can manipulate the search engines so that his article comes first. So to find a truly reliable article on any branch of history, you have to slog through pages and pages of absolute garbage.

Then maybe you should get off Wikipedia, an open source website that anybody and anyone can edit? and what is it with the name calling, isn’t that something that a child resorts to? You don’t seem like an grumpy old man to me, more like a person trying to fit into a society because you have a low self esteem? you can’t find bigger words to describe your feelings for all of the other opposing parties that you don’t believe or agree with other than asshat.

Bob,
I have a problem with your comment about Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a collaborative project to provide a free encyclopedia to the world. It is censored and audited and checked for accuracy. For as many idiots with free time, there are dedicated proponents of spreading accurate knowledge to the world.
To make such a strong connection between “open source” and the concept of “invalid” is similar to declaring that all free things are cheap or worthless- things like air, water, and life (examples are provided in case your internal dialog supported such a statement).
I hope that your use of the concept Open Source here was just an error, and was not meant to stab Wikipedia as a free resource, open to collaborative efforts. Please realize that the cooperation of Wikipedia is a strength, not a weakness.

Bob has a legitimate point. To an educated person, (i.e. somebody who has some concept of the subject he is studying) wikipedia is a wonderful thumbnail source. Myself, I have corrected many wikipedia articles just to have my corrections erased because accuracy was not as important as political orthodoxy. So as a research source, Wikipedia is useless.

So, Bob, what do you call an imbecile who says that I am ignorant and stupid for actually reading the constitution and then follows it up with a quote from the Declaration of Independence, and says that it’s the constitution? I call them asshats. You can call them anything you want. It’s still a free country until the libertarians finish selling us out to the corporations.

You do have a point about wikipedia. I have several blogs on hold because the wikipedia articles are nothing except propaganda. To give Wikipedia credit, they always respond quickly when I point out inaccuracies and or propaganda in one of their articles. Still, I am not going to post a link until I am 200% certain of its accuracy.

On the bright side, Brittanica has a very good website that I am looking at now. If it pans out, I will switch to that.

I don’t know why you keep targeting libertarians.
Libertarian is a slightly outdated concept- it refers back to Locke when either you have the view of Hobbes- that absolute monarchy, as a construct separate from the state of nature, prevents a state of constant, total war- or you held the view that humans did not exist in total war in the state of nature, and that social agreements should be made, but supported by a government- an authority to ensure people were honest. This is what libertarian is, and in this case is the pro-government structure. It is just more democratic and supports the rights of the people compared to the monarchy that invests power in one alone.

I have a headache and I am tired, so my explanation is not as coherent as my explanations normally are. I do hope that you do not attempt to trump my philosophical concepts with historian babble.

Ignoring the term libertarian entirely, define what you think a libertarian is- not with names, examples, or other such means, rather with boiled down beliefs that you think they hold.
That would be helpful to all of us, I think, in understanding where you are coming from.

To put it simply, a libertarian is a person who thinks that the clock can run backwards and can return to a simpler, more honest time, like the founding fathers wanted us to live. As a historian, I know that the past will never happen again, the clock will always run forward, and that libertarianism is a fascist concept.

This was fun to read! I’ve always thought, “Why Guy?” for the same reasons you have here. Yes, I knew it was because of the movie and the comment Faithless made, but stiiilll.

Two random, sorta ignorable tangents: I am not a Moore fan, but a David Llyod fan. You know when their book looses itself? At the end, when Moore was the only one writing.

Secondly, I like what you like about the Anonymous meme, but you can’t like all of it because that is the nature of the beast. My prob with it, on image boards it isn’t so much, “I’m going to be a jerk because I can when I’m anon” but really, “people are jerks here, and that’s what they do, so I’ll follow the herd”.

What you said to another comment, about finding a reliable article and having to “slog through pages and pages of absolute garbage”… Isn’t that such a pain?! It is really hard to find pictures, too, like of a Guy Fawkes mask that is not based on the movie one. Akay, I’ve got nothing left to say after that. :)

Well,as you can see when you wake up at the morning,probably alone at a cheap apartment,and look to the mirror and see yourself,you’re a ridiculous old man who don’t have minimal social life and likes to whine his sad life to any misfortunate person that comes around looking at false attempts of interesting articles.

Your old rusty website is nothing but pure distress from a meaning and useless life of your person.And you still thinks you’re some badly-shaped filthy twat smartass!

Every comment i see in this sucking internet failure you call blog has your answear,and not surprisingly(since you’re a dumb fat loser),this answear comes with a question.So what?you can’t think of anything to say to these righteous people that claims for a good and clear explanation of your gumblin’s?

Now serious,sorry for my bad english.Like you,i’m trying to impress people typing hard words and exclamations.And my country first language is not english too.

The “review” you gave to the movie and to the history of the conspiration of the powder(which you know nothing)isn’t what people like you would say “delightfull to read”.

Maybe these smart-like affirmations make some fucking sense to you,but it is seen at the comments section that your words are as empty as your head.

Like Bob said, you don’t seem like an grumpy old man to me, more like a person trying to fit into a society because you have a low self esteem.

Sorry, Bunkie. Today I reluctantly got out of bed after a wonderful three day Valentine’s Day Weekend with my wife of nearly 27 years. After playing fetch with our Lab-Rottweiller Mix, I made it down to the pharmacy to pick up our son’s medication. That’s when my mood turned grumpy. We Americans are stupid enough to pay out of pocket for our healthcare.

Since 1980, our political propaganda has focused on the past, much like Hitler focused on the days of Charlemagne. We have focused on this nation’s founders as if they were plaster saints who committed miracles. Americans look at the founding of this country like it was the pinnacle of perfection rather than the age of economic oppression that it was. The founding of this nation was a time of slavery, both African and European. Dark skinned people were bought and sold while Europeans indentured themselves to stay alive, and were treated as badly as any slaves. It was a time of unjust taxes upon the poor and no taxes at all on the rich. It was a time when any wealthy man could call the militia to have a poor farmer turned out of his farm. This was the reality of the American Revolution. This is why I have to budget more than half my income for my kid’s medicine. This is why any healthcare I am eligible for costs more than paying out of pocket. This is why our jobs were shipped to the mysterious east, and every day is a struggle for survival.

Yet shitheads such as yourself treat history like it was one of Sarah Palin’s family bedtime stories. Thanks to idiots who look to the past for the solutions to our problems, we have recreated the events of 1929. Not having learned your lesson from that, you keep harping on “American Freedoms” and the non existent “Free Market” like it meant something. You utter asshats are not going to be happy until we have regressed so far into the past that you will have to sell your kids into slavery (apprenticeships 18th century style.) and yourselves into an indenture to Haliburton in order to eat.

Oh how G. W. Bush loves your ilk. Thanks to your idiocy, he will never have to work an honest day in his life.

as im not really into reading all this commentstuff above, i have no idea if this was already mentioned before, but anyway..

its not guy fawkes political ideology which made him famous but his willingness to sacrifice himself for the (in his opinion) greater good. the whole catholic movement had been oppressed, under the rule of king jacobs which was just established because of henry VII dubious sexual morals 80 years earlier. so you cant really claim fawkes belonged to counterrevolutionary forces, as there had never been any revolution.
luckily oppression regularly generates radical movements (no matter if theyre right or left winged) and radical movements tend to respond with aggression and forces the system to adapt to or cope with it. and jacob preferred the latter. the same happened in the weimar republic when the NSDAP and with it hitler gained power and is a purely natural phenomenon.
therefore the idolization of people like fawkes as the incarnation of resistance is pretty logical irrespective of if we consider these processes from our present perspective as “good” or “bad”.

First of all, Bobo, it was not Henry VII. It was Henry VIII. Secondly there was a major revolution going all through Europe at the time. It was called the Reformation. Fellow by the name Luther (Martin, not Lex) nailed his thesis on the church door and all that. Finally, Catholic Repression ended during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Gunpowder Plot occurred during the reign of James I. Guy’s stepfather was possibly Catholic.

I never said the Gunpowder Plot was good or bad. I said it was stupid. It was so stupid that a Catholic turned the plotters over to the king. That’s how out of touch Catesby and his fellow conspirators were. Even the Catholic nobility did not want to end the British Protestant Monarchy.

im sorry bill. there have been some translational problems: in germany james the first is called jacob, which may be due to transliteration or whatever. catholic repression was kind of reinstated under the rule of “james”, in contrast to elisabeths policy of tolerance.

so as you can guess now im german, and thus you dont need to tell me anything about german history, reformation and shit. i know quite well and apparently, considering your reply you didnt get the gist of my comment.
nevermind..

You are absolutely right, Bobo. There was a resurgence of anti-Catholic feeling in Britain. The Catholic League was not happy about James continuing to trade with the Ottoman Empire. As many British Catholic noblemen also had lands and titles in France and Spain, there was a conflict of interest. The Catholic League was boycotting England and the pope was demanding that British Catholics put pressure on James to stop.

There is nothing to link Catesby or Guy into the Catholic League. Most of the Gun Powder Plotters were useless second sons who saw a dim future for themselves in Protestant England. There is no doubt that the Plot itself sparked some violent anti-Catholic sentiment despite the loyal Catholic noblemen who stood with the king.

Guys & Girls…
My grammar and spelling might suck. I’m not a native english speaker.
I seriously believe you guys need to do 3 things.
1. Get a life.
2. Read the comic book V for Vendetta in wich the movie was inspired and read the words of it’s author, (Moore) on why he chose a Guy Fawkes mask.
3. Read the definition of Revolution.
I am no nazi, but to the one who said, “should we call Hitler a revolutionary?” the answer is yes.
Hitler was many things, nutcase, puppet, assasin, racist, renegade, resentful, and many ugly things. However he made a revolution in Germany using the socialist party. (That’s what Nazi means literally, National Socialism in german)

I do not believe you are not an English speaker. That is a common excuse for Public Relations weasels who come into a thread or blog in order to propagandize. You are not speaking improper English. You are speaking corporate English which is used for advertising, mission statements, and sound bites. I do have a life, Erviin. Part of that life is studying history. Anybody who would listen to you is a total ignoramus with no knowledge of history. Who the hell learns their history from comic books? The sort of history you learn from comic books is the sort of history that PR weasels like you can work with.

For instance, your claim that Hitler was a socialist is nothing but the most complete and total bullshit lie, that it can only come out of a Public Relations firm. I understand that Ron Paul and the rest of the right wing libertarian howler monkeys are making that claim, but that only shows you to be as big an asshat as they are. In fact, Hitler was a right wing free market capitalist. He organized all of Germany into a right wing dictatorship for the sake of the German and international corporations. The Nazis assigned jobs, and paid workers out of their tax money while the corporations took in 100% of the profits. The poor and middle class Germans were taxed to their socks and when the economy tanked, their wages went down and their taxes went up. Corporations, on the other hand, got themselves major bail-outs. Today’s United States under Obama has more in common with Hitler’s Germany than any modern socialist country in Europe.

Didn’t you read Mein Kampf? They were raving genocidal maniacs even before they led Germany to a semblance of economic prosperity. But actually they didn’t. The German system was a big manufacturing bubble that burst very quickly. The Nazis worked out a system where the government paid the workers through tax money while the corporations kept 100% of the profits.

Thank you, Legion. Those were the two most honest answers I can think of. I do confess that I very much enjoy seeing the Guy Fawkes masks in the Scientology protests. I can point to a protester and say, “I know you, I would recognize that face anywhere!”
It was never my intention to ruin anybody’s fun. Just stop for a moment and look at the history of the images you decide to use. You would be amazed at the time bombs hidden within.

Bill,
I wish to bring up that if you are saying that the symbolic representation of the Guy Fawkes mask is wrong, then do you think that all symbols in themselves are wrong? The Swastika. A symbol of hate and intolerance. Yet, this symbol is derived from eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. This symbol to these religions represents both life and death, creation and destruction. How then, can it mean hate and intolerance? A symbol is a symbol. Just that. It’s historical context has no meaning when it comes to the use of it. Does it matter why we assume colors with certain allegorical meanings? No. They are what they are. History has shaped them, and while Guy Fawkes in actuality was a failure, his face symbolizes something we all want inside; Freedom. In the book and film V for Vendetta the name Guy Fawkes was never used. Yes, they referenced his actions, and intentions, but the man himself was never referenced. It’s the idea, the idea that we can make a difference.

Wrong symbols equal wrong actions. Bad history=fascism. For instance you are twisting the swastika into shapes it was never meant to hold. While I admit that the swastika is a benign symbol in Eastern Religions, it has a completely different meaning amongst the Norse. To the Norse the swastika was a bind rune joining two Swahilos into a symbol of destruction. Specifically it is the destruction of everything the Norse considered impure. If you were really up on the swastika you would be aware of Hitler’s famous speech where he promised to aim the power of the swastika to purify The Fatherland of Jews and other impurities. The swastika was the perfect symbol of the holocaust because it came directly out of the violence of Teutonic culture.

So yes, we should be aware of the history of our symbols. There is a lot to learn from them. What do we learn from studying Guy Fawkes? Why, quite frankly, it is that one man’s freedom is another man’s tyranny.

Note that Norse culture despised violence, and the presence of violence in their sagas most often symbolized the greatest evil- an epic hero being the man who died to end violent conflicts and change fate from that of natural evil to humane magnanimity. The vikings were Norse, but the Norse were not vikings. That is like saying all of North Africa was made up of pirates in the time of Thomas Jefferson.

We should be aware of history, but we should be aware of everything.
You have been gimmicked the most by PR weasels, because if you have done anything with your life, you have spent your life learning skills that do not make you independent of the systems, but learning why they are wrong. This has led you to laying out every button a PR rep can push. Hell, you made it easy- you posted all of your buttons online, public and available to all.
You do not excite change, you prevent it. You think, however, that you are progressive and doing what is right. That is the perfect setup for any Public Relations agent-
get them to show us what makes them tick,
get them to be dependent on our corporations.

Sir, could you fix your car if your alternator died tomorrow. How about if gasoline was withheld?
Could you survive without grocery stores and restaurants?
If you could grow crops, could you survive nature?
What about medicine? Without pharmaceuticals and modern medicine, could you and your family survive.
You are dependent on industries and corporations- institutions that now are larger than our national government. In fact, these are institutions that ensure the government is filled with advocates of their campaigns, and with making profit.

Think about it, Mr. Grumpy- you have done everything the PR people want.
You specialized. You have chosen a field that you identify with independence (as if history will prevent fascism. The problem is that the government alone is not to be feared, corporations are bigger monsters now. Stop living in the past alone and catch up with what is now).
You have made public and accessible to anyone with a browser and a McDonalds nearby your triggers and opinions, and how you work.
In every way, you have complied.

The two sowilo runes were used for the S,S, (because sowilo represents S, and the rune gave it a feel of German roots). The swastika is not a bind rune of two sowilo runes.
Hitler thought the swastika was a Vedic symbol from the Aryans of India. It was a way to emphasize the Aryan race, and was derived from a concept that they came from India, not Scandinavia.
The Norse used the swastika in association with Thor, not with the Sun, as the sowilo runes would indicate. Though it could be related to the ‘Sun Cross’ (Oðin’s cross), but such as symbol was found throughout the Americas and pre-historic Europe. So much time denotes so many different human observations of the same objective symbol, that the subjective values applied to the symbol are as numbered as human cultures.

I just finished reading through your entire post, and the entire time I thought to myself “there are many other symbols that have different meanings now than they were intended to have.” One of the more prominent ones was the swastika. Looks like Anonymous was thinking the same thing ;) However, i do want to point out that the swastika has used all over the world, even found in Native American history, so it is quite possible that the Norse also changed the meaning of the symbol to fit their own ideals, and that it conveniently fit with the agenda Hitler had. This has definitely changed what we as a people feel over the symbol now, but historically it was never intended as something evil until others made it that way. The winners write history, though. That’s as true to the swastika as it is to the entire blog. If Fawkes had succeeded, he would have been considered a hero rather than an imbecile, and if Hitler would have won the war, the swastika would have a different meaning as well. The point is not what it used to mean, it’s about what it means now. There’s a few other symbols that have gone through a drastic change as well. The cross of St. Peter, for instance. It was used to show humility and unworthiness. St. Peter requested an upside down cross on his tombstone because he felt he was not worthy enough to share the same symbol as Christ. It is now seen more as a symbol against Christianity. How ironic that the very people opposing Christianity would choose to frequently use a symbol displaying how much St. Peter revered the Lord! Another one is the traditional peace symbol. While it is now used as a sign of good, it was once used by Nero, with a much more destructive meaning. Nero saw it as a very effective symbol for his agenda of destroying Christianity. To him, it resembled a cross with the arms broken off and leaning to the sides. And anyone who knows much about history knows that Nero was a mass murderer who showed no mercy to anyone with connections to Christianity. Even the cross itself was considered by Jewish people to be a symbol of death and tyranny before Christ. I know all of these are religious symbols, but they are the easiest to find and honestly the only symbols I’ve really ever looked into are religious symbols (I’m kind of a sucker for using religion against itself). Regardless, there is no reason that the Guy Fawkes needs to symbolize what he did or did not do, when it has taken on a different meaning now. Once something takes mass hold, it no longer matters what the original intentions were, it only matters what they are now. If the mask is used as a symbol of “freedom,” then Guy Fawkes’ actions and beliefs back then no longer matter (save for historical and educational purposes) and all that’s left is the here and now. I agree with you completely, Guy Fawkes was nothing short of a dimwit. However i can understand why the mask has taken such a strong hold. While the things he did were essentially against what people today are looking for, I believe they’ve looked past everything and broken it down to it’s simplest meaning: change. Nobody is looking at what kind of change, be it good or bad, they just know that they want something different, and they’ve found a symbol that is both striking and moving, while also being significant enough to keep the media’s attention. Add that to the cult success of the graphic novel and motion picture, and it makes perfect sense to be used now. I don’t mean to argue with or support you, I’m just trying to add a little insight to the matter. Hope it works :)

No, it does not work. I don’t think you understood a word, and your history is frighteningly inaccurate. First of all, Nero’s persecution of the Christians never happened. There is not one document supporting it. It became part of holy propaganda during the fall of the Roman Empire to justify the establishment of the Catholic Church as the new Roman government. It can be put down with stories about George Washington and cherry trees, or the moral turpitude of Princess Anastasia. You see, the winners do not write history, they write fairy tales. They make up crap to justify the forced change of government or religion. History is written by historians who have to crawl through tons of crap such as Abe Lincoln freeing the slaves or Alexander Hamilton’s integrity in order to pull out a few golden nuggets of truth. In reality, if the Gunpowder Plot succeeded, the British Catholics would have been the first to turn Fawkes and Catesby over to the authorities. The British Catholics were enjoying the same economic expansion as the Protestants, and more British Catholics were making money on the Turkish Trade than Protestants. Remember, it was a Catholic nobleman who ratted Fawkes out.

To repeat the point I was trying to make in the original post, Fawkes was an arch reactionary. Were he alive today, he would be hanging tea bags off his hat and throwing dollars at sick people. I found it ironic that such a reactionary horse’s ass became the darling of the so-called progressive left, who really aren’t that progressive.

Another thing that never ceases to amaze me are the people who try to minimize the holocaust by tritely pointing out that Hindus and Native Americans used the Swastika. Hitler was not a Hindu, nor did he wear feathers. He was a self avowed Catholic who hung out with Norse Revival Neopagans. The Swastika meant exactly what the Nazis meant it to mean, despite how the Hindus or the Native Americans used it. Comparing Nazis to Hindus or Native Americans is a false comparison. It is a logical fallacy.

As my wife just informed me, the Hindu Swastika was also a symbol of death, and death was an important symbol to the European fascists. The Spanish fascists used to cry out “Long Live Death” as they destroyed theaters and art gallerias. Long live death was a cry of triumph after the Spanish National Guard murdered Frederico Garcia Lorca. So the Swastika in the Hindu sense was a very appropriate symbol for the Nazis.

Frighteningly innacurate? I’m sorry, but the respect i had for you for holding such a good debate, and seemingly winning, has been completely obliterated with that one. It seems to me that your hatrid of Christianity has clouded your senses so much that you are actually under the impression that any history involving them at all is a flat out lie. Nero did, in fact, persecute the Christians. After the fire that burned approximately two-thirds of Rome to the ground, Nero accused the Christians in an attempt to take the blame off himself. He led a campaign of aggressive hostlity against Christians within Rome, killing them mercilessly and in grotesque ways, including crucifixion. I’m sorry, but as much as you would like to, you cannot dismiss the fact that this actually did happen. I suppose you also believe the Holocaust didn’t happen? Is that just another Christian propaganda move? You’re letting your hatrid of religion cloud your senses and allowing yourself to believe that anything bad that happened to the Christians throughout history never actually happened, and that they made it up to get sympathy. This is simply not the case. Nero killed Christians, Hitler killed Jews, and you’re just another individual trying to make history fit with your ideals.

Now, as far as the swastika is concerned, since you seem to be so adamant about making it out to be a symbol of evil throughout the ages, let me educate you a bit. The word “swastika” derives from sanskrit as “svastika,” meaning roughly “to be well.” It is used as a symbol of good luck and fortune, often appearing in celebrations, and in nearly every place of worship. The symbol was well known all through Asia and, thanks to trading, made its way to Europe. The Norse were most likely to have picked it up this way, though i don’t honestly know much about Norse lore. I do know, however, that nearly every religion throughout history has used the swastika as a symbol representing good, not evil.

And for the sake of your wife not looking as much a fool as you do, please ask her to do a little more studying on the swastika. The symbol she is thinking of is a sauvastika, opposite of the swastika and the symbol of the night god Kali, and represents night, magic, and other dark things, including death, but does not, in any way, stand for death. She was close, but like you, only took a little bit of the truth and tried to seem knowledgable with it. Of course, that’s no surprise, when she’s had your example to follow for so long.

You are arguing from a Christian perspective, which means you are arguing from bad history all around. Nero’s persecution included all his political rivals and not just Christians Persecutions were a common political tactic in the Roman Empire. In fact, Claudius, Nero’s step-father was unique in Roman history for not having much in the way of persecutions. Augustus had women cut open and burning coals poured into wombs to punish them for giving birth to traitors. Tiberius would kill fathers in front of their children as a warning. Nero was blamed for the burning of Rome. He responded by putting everybody to death including his best friend. Yes, some Christians got caught up in the persecutions, and many more Ethnic Jews were killed, but the persecutions were not specifically aimed at Christians.

As far as the swastika is concerned, my comments were limited to Vikings and Germany. Even my wife’s comment about the swastika being a symbol of Kali’s destructive aspect is a false comparison. The two cultures are too far apart for their to have a connection. Did you know that American pacifists used the swastika as a peace sign during the first world war? In this case there was no connection to the Teutonic or the Hindu meanings for the symbol. You are grasping for meanings and connections which are not there.

Ignorance is rather entertaining, I must say. You don’t understand something so it must be from the mind of those damned liberals, right? No, it’s a meme, conceived by the masses of the internet. There’s no particular meaning, nor reasoning behind it, it’s just there.

Welcome to the internet. A suggestion though, next time you don’t understand something try looking into it, not historically but in a modern point of view.

I am looking at it from a modern point of view. I am looking at it from a POV where Barack Obama has given the store away to Tony Hayward and his corporate cronies. I am looking at a travesty of a healthcare reform which is being cheered by American progressives as a victory. I watch with horror as honest people are pushed out of their homes by Wall St. banks, and Obama hands the banks more money.

I am sorry if the irony of “radicals” using an arch conservative as an icon escapes you. As a socialist, I find it as funny as all hell.

Hey out of curiosity are u a history major? Cause when someone comes up with a great point you try to shoot them down with some ridiculous perspective on history. Site the bullshit your spewing with actual findable FACTS, and then no one can argue differently. Your idea of what the people believed from then seems pretty crazy, considering you were not there. Once again research, facts, citable material, otherwise u just sound like a stubborn uneducated asshole, trying to push your view into fact. And don’t bother replying as i wont be visiting this site ever again.

I have. Repeatedly. To no avail. I have sited many sources in the article and in the comments. I gave up because nobody looks at them. Then, two years from the date of first publication, you demand exactly what I have been providing. Is there something that needs more clarification? Can’t you google it yourself and put it in my face if I am mistaken?

There’s some interesting debaating going on here, but I’m afraid I cannot agree with either your opinion or the opinion of many others commenting.
I think that yes, the V for Vendetta comic and film represented the image of Guy Fawke’s face as an anarchist symbol, and that has since been adopted into the culture of Anonymous.

Wow, that went on for years. I do wish though that you had originally posted your article on November the 5th. The irony would have been perfect. So after I read all the conversation and went back and reread your original article I am left wondering as few things…

Are you a person that likes fiction? Through your article you seem to write angrily towards who Guy Fawkes is being portrayed as. It is as though the misinterpretation ruins the fictitious nature of the movie. I never knew who Guy Fawkes was before the “V” movie and even now that I have learned more about who he was, it is not going to change how I felt about the movie. Guy Fawkes has nothing to do with a post-regime change england.

The plan in the movie was awesome. Which would lead me to another question… Do you have a plan? If we have all the tools, then what is the plan? It feels like you want change. However, trashing a misinterpreted symbol in a movie about change seems odd.

What changes do you want?

A gathering of and a focusing of attention is going to be necessary if we ever want change.

However… I don’t think that the movie’s focus was about national change but personal change. Freedom from within, fearless of death. Fear of pain, fear of hunger, fear for our loved ones is what keeps us like sheep or cattle. Being herded by dogs just waiting to be slaughtered.
I am probably on the left-side but I don’t think that the left is the answer. The only time I can remember feeling united as a nation was just after 9/11. I fear that we (as a nation) will not become united again until another massive catastrophe happens and we are all forced to look within and reevaluate who we are. This nation wide reevaluation will hopefully be when we can put aside all our differences and devise a plan where we resolve our issues as a nation.
Not so much a revolution as a resolution.

I know it has gone on for years, and you have no idea how frustrating that is for me. There are so many other posts I would love to see comments in, but this one has been the most popular. I only wrote it for the irony.

Yes, I do love fiction. As a matter of fact, I recently signed an agency contract for a five book fantasy series I’ve been marketing like forever. While I love fiction I hate stereotypes. One stereotype that has to be broken is the idea that just because somebody is a rebel means that he is a good guy. Back when I was in elementary school, Bonnie and Clyde became the big Robin Hoods of our time. The Truth with the big T is that they were a pair of no-good murdering losers. The fact of the matter is that Guy Fawkes was a reactionary who wanted to make the clock move backwards. As such, he is the perfect symbol of the American Libertarians who want to move America backwards to a time that never happened.

I think the first step in any plan is to revive the once great American public school system.

Though late to the party, I feel the need to comment on this. First of all, I don’t understand why all of these repliers seem to hate you, original poster. I for one applaud you for backing up your opinions and sourcing them with such precision. Just because a person has a differing opinion doesn’t make them unassailably correct, nor does it give them the right to accuse those with whom they disagree. All I see here are people talking down at you from an opinion that, at best, might loosely be based on what they read in a highschool textbook. I won’t argue opinions with you, being an agnostic and politically independent, but I would like to say that in all honesty I doub the creators of V bothered to look that much into the history or maybe held the same opinions as some of the people above. Or perhaps they knew the history behind the matter and it was born of a dry sense of humor or cruel joke. Possibly some attempt at satire? As someone said above: The mask looks cool.

4. People nowadays wear a mask.
Or is that something of all times?
Havent’t people always pretended to be something else than what they really are?
If you look at our origin, you can compare us to apes to see how we were in history.
Even apes are really conscious about their image.

I made it about halfway through these comments, so if I bring up something previously debated, kindly excuse me.

Lloyd and Moore, as we’ve already established, probably didn’t choose the mask for historical purposes; it is more likely they were chosen for the commercial purposes and to sell their idea (ironically).

I feel the need to point out, as another Anon mentioned about the graphic novel, in the novel V actually mentions anarchists being “destroyers and creators.” The anarchists who are destroyers do simply that: destroy the establishments, authority, or governments that they feel oppress them. The creators are the anarchists who, how V puts it, build and create structure from the rubble of the toppling governments.

One of the Anons mentioned “Usually when someone plans to topple a government they have a plan for order in the aftermath… There was always a new government waiting to enter from stage left as soon as the stage was clear. V didn’t, nor did he want that. The leaders of the Gunpowder Plot, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t have a plan either, they just wanted the current leaders gone.”

In the novel V states to Evey he was the “destroyer” and intended for the seed, the idea of a creator or even for a creator, to be planted because of what he accomplished. He didn’t know of an after plan, he knew what his fate would be and left it up to others to take appropriate action.

That’s basically what I took from the novel and movie, and related it to Guy Fawkes. Of course, Moore and Lloyd could have been more historically accurate (or even, bluntly, historically accurate at all), but it was most likely a creative decision to use the Guy Fawkes mask as V’s optimal choice.

I am an avid V for Vendetta fan, so, I’m almost one hundred percent sure, if I had a Guy Fawkes mask I would be one of the ignorant crowd that wears it around without knowing its background or purpose; but I do feel like I am not totally uninformed on the subject. I strongly believe, though, the crowd that does go around spouting Guy Fawkes nonsense do so strictly because of the publicity the movie has given him. It seems to be their way of showing their appreciation and adoration for the movie. Even though I can’t deny I, in lack of a better word, love the novel and the movie, at least I try to research these things before making myself look like a fool.

Hi, Lindsay, and welcome to the most pointless discussion on the internet. I posted some facts that I found to be amusing, and I end up with the discussion that never ends. That will teach me to barbecue sacred cows, I guess. Well to explain one point that was explained in the article, Catesby did indeed have a plan. He was going to kill most of the protestant nobility with the gun powder under parliament. Once the protestant nobility was dead, he was going to have the James I’s children kidnapped and raised in the Catholic faith. The old Catholic nobility would be restored to their previous influence, the merchants would be put in their places, and England would rally around the pope in the next crusade against the Musselmen.

I am convinced that Rowan Atkinson was thinking of Guy Fawkes when he created the character Baldric to be Blackadder’s sidekick. Fawkes was that stupid and caved under torture in record time. Fawkes, along with the stylized face with the mustache and little soul patch, became the mascot of the British anarchists around the turn of the 20th Century. They used to put up posters with the Guy Fawkes’ face and the caption, “The only man to ever enter parliament with honest intent.” It was a black joke that was supposed to get a chuckle. Lloyd and Moore adapted the Fawkes caricature from the early 20th Century into the Guy Fawkes mask we know today. The rest is history that got out of hand.

Constitutionalists do not want to return America to the modalities of the unamended Constitution. Of course, that is an absurd accusation.

We simply want to return to true Constitutionality (instead of concocted lies proffered or condoned by pseudolegisltors in black robes). That is because if we do not have law which is actually law, by being based upon our foundational Constitution, the very determinant of legality, society becomes a contest of who can get away with cheating. And here you have your chaos and anarchy — and the despotry which always fills that vacuum.

Good afternoon, Arlen, and welcome to “A Penny for the Guy” the longest running thread on Word Press. Since I first posted this blog, I have moved three times, changed jobs twice, and contracted with a literary agent. I have been thinking about cutting off comments to this post, but then I figured, what the hell? I’m going to let it keep going and maybe I’ll will it to one of my sons after I pass away.

I am all for constitutionality. I think it’s a fine and dandy idea and I can’t wait to try it. The problem here is establishing a constitution not subject to unauthorized changes made by “pseudolegisltors in black robes”. If you examine the third part of the Constitution you will discover two very important facts. The first being that there are no term limits. A federal judge can hang on like a pope and do even more damage. Hell, Julius Hoffman hung on until he was in his 90s. Back in 1989 I watched in horror as a 90 year old Pennsylvania Mennonite in a black robe threw a slam-dunk incest case out because he didn’t believe the crime was possible. Then the senile old bastard gave the kids back to mommy and step-daddy dearest. The Constitution gives these idiots that kind of power. As if that wasn’t bad enough, federal judges are appointed and not elected. That means any faction in power can stack the courts with any ass-kissers they can get away with. That’s why John Bybee is in the California Court of Appeals rather than scrubbing out prison toilets like he deserves. We also live by an archaic form of British Common Law that gives American judges the same broad sweeping power reserved for English Barons.

So in light of evidence, are you in favor of changing the Constitution by armed rebellion, or are you a change it from within type reformer?

Geeze.. I’ve spent to much time reading this.. I’ve always seen the masks and they look cool has hell, I thought it was because he tried to lie about who he was and hide his identity like “V” does and like Anonymous does. Almost everyone on here comes to prove you wrong and I LOL.. I like this whole thing though. Good Job!

Hi, Tanner. Welcome to A Penny For the Guy, the longest running commentary on WordPress. I was thinking about closing down comments on this post, but what the hell! Let’s go for the record! You are our 89th commenter. How exciting is that? I have decided to make this into a contest. The person who posts the 200th comment on this post wins an advance copy of my upcoming novel, “The Girl of My Dreams”. So keep those comments coming boys and girls. You might be our lucky 200th winner.

I know after two years this conversation it must be getting old for you and reminds me of “The enemy at home “ by Dinesh D’Souza on page 7 the author says its common to see leftist wear Che Guevara tee shirt but he says the would never a leftist wear a t-shirt displaying Ayatollah Khomeini. Overall I have to say I agree with you that someone made a poor choice in masks awhile back in choosing that symbol for the group but we will never no for what reason maybe they were out of M.L.K. and Che Guevara masks. However I would have to say both those would be just as poor of a choice. this mask is some what like a swastika a symbol that has changed meaning over the years and while maybe Guy Fawkes mask ment something different than it does today it now represents what ever we make it to be . that being said my personal vote would be for a Mohammad Mossadegh mask but they don’t make those. BTW I do have a Mossadegh tee. Also anyone who is smart enough to grab NATO docs has nothing but my complete admiration for being a very smart and well read individual and while that may not have been my first choice as a mask it suits the purpose and I have no business questioning those who are smarter than I.

Great essay, you’re totally right. The guy was not very bright. I really think the mask became popular because it looks cool and the story involves exploding the govt which is always exciting. Often people look at an underdog and automatically assume he’s good. Many times they’d be right. In this case they’d be wrong, but it’s not often enough anyone catches it.

I’d like to see you write something about muslims. After a fatva on your head and you becoming a fugitive in hiding(together with your entire family) you will come to love&adore&appreciate every christian with every fibre of your antireligious ‘marxist-progresive’ being:)

I’m not directing this for you only Bill but for the other smart asses calling ppl who believe in God ignorant fools with no intelligence.

I’m sorry to inform you all but this post wasn’t about religion but about rebels and why they choose a silly looking mask.

So, everyone back the hell off.

On other note as a historian myself ppl even after reading accurate historic data choose and see only parts of the sentences which they can use for their cause so these argumented discussions are nothing but ppl taking a piss on each other.

Everyone’s opinions are validated equally in my mind’s eye so I’m really surprised how can ppl be so stupid to call others stupid before calling themselves stupid too.

I hate the mask, see no reason to use it for anything.

btw.Protestants aren’t any smarter then other christians. And as for ppl who think that ideology is better then religion, get a life and get real a.s.a.p
Reading Karl Marx, Platon or some scientist writting books which ridicule ppl who believe(in any way) in God(any form) or some other bullshit writter(yep, read a little about their lives so maybe you’ll stop being a devotee) wont get you anywhere near understanding why you don’t believe and others do. Ridiculing it and calling it stupid and non-progressive doesn’t make it less important to others.
It is and this is just my personal belief(not a book,ideology or religious manifest) far better to pray to God(in any way) and believe in afterlife(where you meet your dear ones again) then succomb to cynism, satanism,antirelgion,suicide, promiscuity and generally being a hater8and good way to get yourself miserable is to make KKK crowds to go after ‘religious’ ppl.

And I didn’t write this to insult Bill,just as a reaction to everyones pissing contest.

Well, Gnome, welcome to A Penny for the Guy, the biggest tempest in a tea pot on WordPress. BTW, I have written about Muslims. In fact, I even have a friend from Bahrain who is a real live Ihman! He even issues fatwahs, only he writes them against the human trafficking in his home country, as well as the practice of keeping slaves. You see, there are as many socially aware progressive Muslims as there are Christians. However, Fox News prefers to focus on the bat-shit crazy ones.

But you do make a good point about cherry picking. People do it with history all the time and it pisses me the hell off.

The mask became popular for one reason only: The Church of Scientology records the names of people present at protests and then sues them in court. People of anonymous wear the mask because it is recognizable and easy to get and hides their identity. If a Kermit the Frog mask had caught on, then people would use that instead. The mask has almost nothing to do with the original Guy Fawkes character, except that he was used as a figure in a movie. Your entire piece misses this point.

My piece didn’t really have that much of a point. I discovered something that I found amusing and shared it. The result has been a deluge of hate comments, protests, and social commentary. With all this fuss, you would think I denied the existence of Jesus. In fact, I think I am going to do that. I will post a brief historic analysis of why Jesus could not possibly exist, and see if it generates as much controversy as this post.

But keep the comments coming, Boys, girls and anybody who identifies somewhere in-between. The 200th commenter wins a free e-copy of my upcoming novel, “The Girl of My Dreams”, which fortunately, has nothing to do with Guy Fawkes.

And I was already aware of the Scientology thing. Whenever I pass a Scientology protest, I hug the guy in the mask and say I would know that face anywhere. Good job. I appreciate Anonymous’ efforts.

Qwerty, the guy wearing the Guy Fawkes Mask in the movie was getting rid of a corrupt government. The Historic Guy n\Fawkes was trying to reestablish the Catholic Monarchy. The first Guy Fawkes was the figment of Alan Moore’s fertile imagination. The Guy Fawkes I was writing about really existed. Movies are fantasy. History is reality. Can you tell the difference?

Wow I hope your book is a little more interesting and less repetitive than this post. Nobody today gives a damn about the real Guy Fawkes, just you. The reason they wear the masks is because ‘V’ did, it is easily identifiable with a cause/theme and possibly they don’t want to be recognised/recorded at anti-government demonstrations. I admit this is sad but true.

I understand, Bored. History is not everybody’s cup of tea. Do you like football? I frigging hate football almost as much as I hate cold toilet seats. To each his own. You are also right about this post being bored and repetitive, but that seems to be the risk you take when you barbecue sacred cows. Everybody reads the post and has the same outraged reaction. For instance, we already covered the V for Vendetta theme about a year and a half ago. There were a couple of conversations regarding not wanting to be recognized. In fact, there are quite a few things I wrote that I wish was commented on, but this one gets all the action. Just for shits and giggles I’m going to pick on Ron Paul and see if I get as many posts as this one.

But thank you for visiting, A Penny for the Guy, the longest going thread on WordPress. I imagine that the closer we get to the Fifth of November, the more comments will be coming. I wonder if we will have a lucky winner by then.

Oh you are welcome. Incidentally, the 5th of November is a movie thing. This thread is a fed up thing, now powered by Occupy Wall Street. Much like the modern day Tea Party, this has no relation to history whatsoever. The original tea party in Boston harbor was not a revolt against paying taxes, it was a revolt against taxation without representation, and the cozy relationship of the crown with the East India Tea Company; politicians doing whatever they want, and corporations supporting them with funds and influence. That is a far cry from the percieved motives of the Tea Party (there real ones are as diverse as OWS). Both groups attached to a symbol, not some in depth study of history.
To me, the difference between the groups, is liberals want to help each other (except the affluent, of course), the conservatives have more of a ‘screw you, I got mine, and keep your grubby hands off’ vibe. Each have their own pluses and minuses. Niether seem to be able to accept that there is value in the others opinion, no matter how identical they are.

I have to agree will Bill on most this one. Those that chose the symbol were much more familiar with the comic book/movie “V” than Guy Fawkes. Fawkes was no hero of the people. That being said the scene in the book where all the people in the street had masks on was very powerful. I believe the mast is protrayed a symbol of anonymity rather than any one person. Could there have been a better symbol? Probably.

Y cant you understand that people are just using the mask as a symbol of revolution. it doesn’t have to mark people as killers. it is simply a statement that they are not happy with how the government is operating. its completely metaphorical!

I agree with Luke, we all know something is wrong… we should fix it.. anything has got to be better than what is in place now that keeps the 5% with 95% of the wealth and the rest of us 95% with only 5%… oh yea that and that 5% wants the rest of us 95% dead… the subject of killing everyone in the world but the wealthy few has come up more than once in the last decade and change needs to be made.. most of us are tired of waiting around and this seems to be a symbol that we can all relate to… sorry if it makes you butt hurt but guess what… we don’t care, just like most of us could care less about having all of the money in the world… what is money compared to cherishing the love of one’s friends and family… that is the true definition of rich. Look at how the King tortured those people.. change should have been inevitable, who wants a psychopathic few ruling over them.. even with all the misdeeds of the catholic church and their so called “crusades” it was better than an egotistical psychopathic fraud of a leader. Almost like those ruling us now…

By the way, did you know corporations are considered one? Just as a person.. which means they are worth more considering they earn more capital than a person… changes my friend, changes are in order, will you help the advancement of possibly the wealthiest, most caring generation of people, or hinder us by accepting that what is in place now is the best possible choice…

Miguelone,

is this not taxation without representation?… why should the rich receive a tax break, they are the ones who can afford more taxes.. where is the representation… when will the people’s voice be heard.. it is ignored under the pretense that whoever is in charge already has an agenda that they do not want halted. We should all take a look at a true American heroes messages by the name of Thomas Jefferson… He once warned us about all of this, but like history has shown us, we tend to ignore the most intelligent warnings because we, ourselves, care only about our own personal agendas instead of our neighbors well being too.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “Freedom will never be given by the oppressors… it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Besides. Catholic Kings were just as prone to torture as Protestant Kings. Hell, during the Whiskey Rebellion, George Washington had his political enemies tortured. This is not to say that torture is right. Only that you found still another stunning false comparison.

Words….so many. Couldn’t possibly digest this much bullshit. Free market capitalism and limited government are all that is needed to return us to prosperity. Less taxes and bullshit would be a great start.

Free Market Capitalism? You have to be kidding me. How long is that bullshit going to survive. Look around you! Free Market Capitalism put the world into the mess we are in, and further stupidity is only going to make things worse.

For my next sacred cow barbecue, I will do a piece on that religious nut-case, Adam Smith. Thanks for the inspiration.

This has been a really interesting read. Particularly (as someone else pointed out) since I reached the blog via an image of the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask.

For me, the original Guy Fawkes is neither hero nor terrorist as I have no point of reference with regard to that specific situation, and a point of reference is always personal as history is definitely written by the powers that be. If I had lived in that time, I would have viewed Fawkes from my personal perspective which would have been based on emotion and my own pocket book. Since I don’t know what my status would have been, I can’t make a judgement.

I think the same could be said of extremist Muslim terrorists today and their hatred of anything that isn’t in line with their thinking. Clearly, I think of them as terrorists, and yet they see themselves as fighting for “their” religious beliefs. And their actions have been condemned by a large portion of the Muslim population.

As for the mask itself and what it represents today, I think the meaning has been bastardized and that is means something entirely different than it did some four-hundred years ago. The government then wasn’t what I think of as totalitarian. People weren’t losing their soul to the government.

I happened to love the V for Vendetta movie, and I saw the final scene (blowing up Parliament) as a blow against a totalitarian government that needed to be brought down simply because they suppressed all freedoms not just one or two. While the character’s motivations were based on revenge for what had been done to him, I viewed him as a sympathetic individual based on my own personal belief structures. Additionally, it was, after all, just a movie. *smile*

I see the movie’s mask being used now as a protest against governments that pretend to be for the people, yet benefit only the few. They point out the people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo, and indicate that some form of revolution is on the horizon. The question is whether that revolution will be in the form of chaos or stability. At the moment, I’m thinking mob rule could easily reign for a while until organization emerges from the chaos.

Again, interesting blog and comments, and all because I was searching for the image of a Guy Fawkes mask. LOL

Welcome to A Penny for the Guy, the biggest tempest in a teapot on wordpress. Thank you for your comment, but alas, you are not yet the lucky winner. I have to disagree with your comment about history being written by the winners. I am sorry but the winners never write history. They write propaganda. True history is discovered by historians using the proper scientific method. Part of historic research is discovering the “seat in life” of the people or events being studied. As such, you are perfectly correct that we cannot call Guy a terrorist. He was working through motivations and beliefs which are very foreign to 21st Century homo sapiens, and it takes considerable work to understand the worldview. It all becomes worthwhile when you understand that 16th Century Guy has more in common with Muslim terrorists than we do. By taking the time to understand Fawkes, we come to understand the Muslims.

Ahh, but what is history if not propaganda since not all historical facts can be acquired using a proper scientific method. There are theories on ancient civilizations that are impossible to prove or disprove simply because there isn’t enough info to piece together. It is far easier for someone who’s directing the communications of the time period to direct the retelling of the day’s events.

We can theorize and hazard good guesses about things that occurred, but we can never be 100 percent certain about something unless we lived/experienced it. When someone is in charge of things it gives them the ability to spin things the way the want. Something I’ve found all politicians excel at.

As for worldview in regards to Muslim terrorists, I believe that’s America’s biggest downfall. We do not understand the mindset, therefore it is incomprehensible to us why someone is willing to strap a bomb to themselves or fly a plane into the ground. When we do not understand, we fail to grasp the problem and are therefore doomed to fail in finding an appropriate response and/or answer.

Sorry, Guys (pun intended) but you totally lost me when you went into your libertarian phase. Libertarianism is a movement trying to solve today’s problems with solutions that stopped working yesterday. And you have made some really dick moves of late.

I have nevaar seen moar bile in a comment thread :L
just because we wearr the mask dosnt mean we are in lesbiens with Fawksy and his
whole life story + ideologies ect
we are in lesbiens with the idea that there dosnt have to be a leader
we dont have one. thats why the logo of anon is a headless guy with a suit
no leader+ resists corruption+ fights for free speech= Anonymous.
we’re not going to try and blow up the houses of parliament its a fine old building. we just want the people inside it to work for the people outside it and not for their own interests.
Do moar research and come back for round 2 ;)

Even if the above is historically accurate. One needs only to look to the movie V for Vendetta to understand why he is considered a revolutionary figure, yes maybe he wasn’t there for honest reasons, but he stood for the idea of blowing up parliament, your saying he wasn’t revolutionary, he was just trying to change Britain back to papal control. So he revolted…. that’s revolutionary, he stood for his belief even if it was moronic. Guy wanted to change something so he became part of a plan to blow up parliament, what more do you want. someone said something about Hitler, well he was revolutionary. Just because he was bad doesn’t mean it wasn’t revolutionary. Hitler tried to take the government by force, he revolted when that didn’t work and he wrote Mein Kampf in jail, and people started following him, he then took over the government in Germany that is a revolution, don’t be naive and think that just because he did bad things that it wasn’t a revolution, everybody gets these ideas in their head that a revolution is a good thing because of the American revolution, its not the case, many revolutions have put dictators in power, simply because the government was too weak. Back on the Subject of Guy, He is a revolutionary figure, he tried to change the government, back then the church and government were closely linked so even if it was for religious reasons it was still a revolution. The Man knew that they were looking for him and he had the courage to try to go through with it. Whether his beliefs were right or wrong doesn’t matter to me the fact that he was willing to go through with a compromised plan because of his idea is enough for me. In V for Vendetta V says something along the lines of The building is a symbol, so is the act of blowing it up, alone a symbol is meaningless but with enough people it can change the world. We do not remember Fawks for the man he was or his reasons for doing it. We understand that people have flaws, He is seen for a revolutionary man because of what he attempted to do. It is the Idea and his courage that make him famous.

Thank you, Will, in one paragraph you have summed up why OWS is turning into a clusterfuck. Nobody knows forwards from backwards to upside down. Now you are aware that V for Vendetta is only a movie, right? It was a movie that was meant to be entertaining. It is not real. The characters are not real. It is all make-believe. I am sorry to be so harsh and raining on your happy parade, but in order for something to be revolutionary, it has to be based on reality.

Also there is a huge difference between a revolt and a revolution. Anybody can revolt. Hitler led a revolt against the Socialist take over of Germany after WW I. Guy Fawkes was the dog’s body of a group that was revolting against the English Reformation. In both cases this was a counter-revolutionary revolt. In the case of the Gunpowder plot, the rebels were trying to restore a Catholic monarchy. In the case of Hitler, he was restoring a neopagan form of government that never existed in the first place. Hitler’s former German glory only existed in the minds of madmen, because Germany was never a united country until the Socialist Revolution. That is another reason why libertarians and people who wear Guy Fawkes masks scare the hell out of me. You are fighting to restore freedoms we never had and restore a government that only existed in the mind of Allen Moore.

In order for something to be revolutionary, the rebels have to gather round a new idea. The Trade Unions were revolutionary as they promoted the idea of collective bargaining and universal health care. The communists were revolutionary in that they proposed the new ideas of Marx. The European Socialists were revolutionary as they promoted the theories of Jeremy Bentham. See the difference? Be they democratic or despotic, revolutions form around new ideas, not returning to the old ones. Got it?

This is why I am convinced that OWS is going to lead to a dictatorship as brief and as bloody as the Thousand Year Reich. Our rebels cannot decide if they are heading forward or moving back. They think the propaganda in the Federalist Papers is real, and they have no direction what so ever.

>>in order for something to be revolutionary, it has to be based on reality

Sir, I would disagree. Things based outside reality can also be revolutionary.
Perhaps you meant that V’s fictional act should not be inspiring, since it was not actual.
I think that fiction can be revolutionary. Upton Sinclair fueled a revolution in the food industry with The Jungle.

I think people can feel inspired by V, just as they can by actual leaders.
Usually fictional characters will be more successful- they are easier to keep in ideal and weaken with error and controversy.
V is fictional, but he is just an emergent property of certain concepts the artists had in mind for their story. Similarly we have Uncle Same and Joe the Plumber. Joe may be more realistic, but the Joe the Plumber we all use in speech is collective. It represents more than just the man.
Similarly, V is designed to inspire revolution. I do not see why he cannot be revolutionary.

Fskr, you must be a fan. This is the third or fourth time you have commented on one of my blogs. Keep commenting, and you may be our lucky 200th poster. If so, you will be the lucky winner of my upcoming novel, “The Girl of My Dreams”, which will be the first in the series of five fantasy novels.

Please note, the operative word here is “Fantasy”. It is an urban fantasy set in the Lower East Side. If it inspires you, I will be tickled pink. If you use it as a blueprint of revolution, however, I don’t care if I have to rise from the grave and haunt your ass. I will get even.

You are presenting me with a false comparison. The Jungle and V for Vendetta are both forms of fiction. However, they are such different forms of fiction that there is really no comparison. In The Jungle, Sinclair weaves a story out of actual occurrences. Everything in that book actually happened to somebody. Not Jorge, the main character, but it happened. Absolutely everything in V was entirely made up. The Jungle was written in the Job format, so that Jorge could redeem himself through socialism as thel solution to meat industry abuses. Really, how practical is anything in V for Vendetta. Just try to torture your girlfriend that way and watch how fast you get your ass handed to you.

My book is another form of fiction whatsoever. It is satire. Not satire as in mock, but satire (I like to think) in the Harlan Ellison sense. I am telling what I myself observed in the financial industry, but I am using fantasy to illustrate it. If this inspires you to actually learn about the financial industry and its abuses, I have done a pretty fair job. If it becomes the revolutionary plan, I will have laid another brick on the road to hell.

The problem with real life is that it does not follow art. Look at Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and The Church of All Worlds it inspired. More people have gotten fucked up and fucked over from that outfit than from the IRS. They are the wonderful people who brought us Leonard Lake! So I think my point here is that fantasy is not so much fun in real life. It is best to keep them separated.

>>Absolutely everything in V was entirely made up.
So Parliament is an imaginary building, England an imaginary country, and the government a fictional threat.
It is very hard, indeed, to write fiction outside of reality.

However, I think you are making an interesting point of deviation.
V for Vendetta is too far from reality to be relevant to real solutions, like revolutions.

I might agree with you- but I do not think that we should always keep our reality separate from our art. I think that the combination of these two is closer to progress than the alternative.

I find it valid to say that the acts in fiction are not going to accurately represent acts in reality, that each is a subjective kind of art. And this probably means that we should not derive solutions to problems from art and fiction. However, I think that art often serves to show people problems more often than solutions.
When the solutions are offered, they can end up (as you are noting) inappropriate to the circumstance.
Then again, we define law according to a document from the late 1700s written by people with no concept of the modern world or its problems.
The amendments and changes to this document rely on the unanimous consensus of dissenting, self-interested politicians threatened by lobbyists and corporations.

I think that, though fiction may not be entirely appropriate to define a movement, neither are the current systems and constituents.
Perhaps a little inspiration and change for the better would be ideal. The enactment of these changes, however, should be grounded in utility and reality- each solution being relevant to the times and people affected.

I am not necessarily a fan, I just like to read the intellectual banter. It replaces the newspaper.

Damn, and here I thought I was going to have a fan. I always wondered what that was like……………

I also think you are taking my point a little bit beyond what I meant here. This is turning into one of those “But is it art” discussions, and there is now way art can be defined or confined. Quite often art is simply what the artist creates. What we both agree on is that art is not the blueprint for revolution. Remember that the next time some bonehead starts talking about red and blue pills. I’ve reached the point where I go into fetal position and cry anytime The Matrix is mentioned.

The Matrix is thematically interesting, entertaining, and otherwise inspiring. Don’t hate the Matrix, hate the people who inappropriately enjoin it.

Fanfare is not an appropriate interaction, in my opinion.
I support you more this way than as a fan.

Anyone can be an artist- doctors, architects, computer programmers, plumbers, etc.
If art is just the work of an artist, art can be of any medium- concrete or abstract.
Perhaps revolutionaries can be artists, and the revolution itself be an art.
;D What do you think?

I’ll have to take your word that the Matrix is thematically interesting. Personally, I think Wayne Wightman gave the theme much better treatment in his works. By the time I saw the movie, I was so sick of red pill, blue pills, and pink with purple polka-dot pills that I was ready to scream. When I saw that Cornel West had a part in that movie, I burned my Democratic Socialists of America Card. West’s grandstanding is utterly destroying any creditability the party ever had.

I think the reason that art cannot be revolutionary is that popular art has become so commercialized. Rather than fighting the capitalist exploitation of the artist, West rode a wave of commercialism that led to his support of Barack Obama, who, like John Kerry, was Wall St’s man in the Senate. This kind of art has become purely appearances without substance.

Why is the question about Guy Fawkes one that cannot be answered? It’s pretty simple. Guy Fawkes may have been a reactionary at the time, but he was also a revolutionary – working against the current government. The “V for Vendetta” book came out during the Thatcher administration. The movie came out during the Bush administration. It’s as simple as that. Both movie and book were dealing with someone who was working against the current government. When I watch the film now, I wonder why the Guy Fawkes mask isn’t a favorite of the right-wing. But the bottom line is: Why Ask Why?

anonymous is a terrorist organization thats hates jews and they should be shut down and thrown in prison.and the so called revolutionaries in this country are the ones whor are destroying it.labor unions ,the public school system and those filthy disgusting OCW protesters should all just shut ther mouth’s and stop trying to change what our four fathers worked so hard for.free market capitalism and freedom of religion are the things that make this country great.

Hi, Nate and welcome to “A Penny For the Guy,” The longest running soap opera on WordPress. You are our 167th poster, congrats, but you still haven’t won the free copy of my upcoming novel. So keep those comments coming! Maybe next time, you might get lucky.

I would really like to hear your plan to capture and jail anonymous. It must be a dilly. You see, those good old boys (and girls) don’t have any leaders. They have no headquarters. You might catch a couple, but the rest of them will blithely go about their business. I have no doubts that some people in Anonymous are bigots. Libertarianism runs rampant in the dot com environment so you’ll run into some Ron Paulistas. Others are just misguided. The same can be said about OCW protesters. I don’t oppose OCW because they are protesting, I oppose them because I don’t think they are being very effective. After all, this nation was founded on slavery, and it’s long past time that changes.

Strangely, you are right. This nation was founded by God, but not the God a modern Christian would recognize. In the days before The Rapture nonsense came into fashion, American non-conformists believed the Return of Christ could be brought about through establishing just laws on Earth. The actual people who fought and died for American Freedom believed that God hated slavery, and wanted all slaves freed with cash remedies for the indignity of being owned. They also believed in equal rights for everybody, including the Natives, whom they believed should have been left alone. If Jesus wanted the Indian to be Christian, Jesus would reveal himself to them, was the prevailing attitude. Under the Continental Congress, the people who worked the land owned it, and land speculation was illegal.

The people we remember as the Federalists were actually royalists. George Washington put down Christian rebellions until 1775 when Parliament outlawed slavery. Since Washington couldn’t run Mt. Vernon without slaves, he joined the revolution. John Adams felt slighted the crown didn’t give him a peerage, and believed that the Revolution was only against Parliament, and the king should rule America without it. Alexander Hamilton floated a bond scam that robbed the Revolutionary enlisted man of his land grants and back pay to provide a pension for the officers.

and believe it or not this nation is 80% christian so we are still a christian nation.and i do not believe college students or ther professors have any clue or sense of truth about a single fact in history.because the people that write the history books they study are the people that seek to erase God and the true Conservative nature of our God fearing founding fathers

That argument is a logical fallacy called a vox poppuli or argument through numbers. Even if 80% of this nation are culturally Christian, it is not proof that God exists.

The True Christian nature of the true founders of this nation can be found through their name, The Regulators. So called because they believed that the Free Market was the work of Satan and true justice came from strict laws that protected the poor from the sinful rich.

and the rapture is not non-sense and jesus is about faith.something this world is far to mis-guided and weak to comprehend i only pray the communist in the white house havent doomed america all together

Sorry, Nate, but history shows a distinct difference in belief stemming all the way from recorded history. The Founders never believed in the rapture, because the idea wasn’t even thought of until the middle of the 19th Century and never really caught on until the middle of the 20th. As far as god is concerned, I feel that such belief is self-deceit. I see no evidence for belief in any such being.

your so called facts are a lie sir.obviously you have never read the bible because that has been around for 2,000 years that directly talks about the rapture and was not thought of by man but divined by God.as an american i respect your right to an opinion but storngly disagree.you say ther is no proof of god but you also cant prove he doesnt exist .and weather you believe in god or not he believes in you.in the end every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is king.God bless you bill and i will pray for you as a brother in christ.

Dear Nate,
At first I found your lack of punctuation annoying and ignorant. Starting each sentence with an anticlimactic lower-case letter did not motivate me to continue. The jammed collisions between words and periods when a sentence ended read like the jumbled blabbering of Benjamin Compson.

Furthermore, the content of your post seemed to boil my bones. No longer did those nutrient rich books smile in my memory- your disregard for human heritage rooted in objective and well sourced knowledge was sacrilege. Your words are antithesis to all that I would hope this world to be.
Not only do you admit that it is okay for others to have any belief (regardless of its validity), you yourself claim to have beliefs rooted in faith, rather than evidence.
To top it off you adorn this shit pile of nonsense with a hubristic “i will pray for you”.

While I applaud Bill’s attempts to reason with you, I am afraid I lack the patience or tolerance.
I would suggest you never vote, you never reproduce, and that you follow your Bible in absolute quarantine of the rest of society. When people lose the ability to rationalize or choose a life of reality, they are institutionalized. I do not see why you should not be.
If there truly is a God, may he bless you away- but I think, for now, it is best that the nice people in white coats take care of you.

Hi, Narwhal, and thank you for being the 179th poster. Remember, our lucky 200th will receive a free ecopy of my upcoming novel “The Girl of My Dreams.” Who knows, you might be our lucky winner, so try again.

And believe me, it is not tolerance that keeps me replying to religious nonsense. It is hope. It is hope that somebody will read our comments and be moved to investigate. I admit that it is a forlorn hope, as religion is the dictator of the human spirit, and it is something the victims do to themselves to oppress themselves.

@narwhal if you find me that ignorant and unreasonable.why comment at all?i know the truth you just believe the lies. man made text books of opinions never fact written by pompous communist with self-proclaimed intelligence.for these ideas ,i will not comply.i only believe in the words of the one the only God and no one can distort or take away my believe in god and what i know to be true. despite what you think my prayers are sincere.the world doesn’t need your man made reason and foolish ideas of the way things were and should be .God wins in the end i only pray you see the error of your ways.i pray the blood of Jesus Christ my savior over your lives in the name of God amen

As a matter of fact, Nate, I have studied the Bible. Aside from 13 years of Hebrew school and Bar Mitvah classes, I attended two years at Lebanon Valley College in central PA. I had the pleasure of taking an old testament class with Dr. Vorhis Cantrell, studied basic Christian theology and ethics under Dr. L. Elbert Wethington whom I will always love with all my heart. I do not believe in God but I deeply believe in the personal integrity of Dr. Wethington. I even sat through and absorbed Dr. Perry Troutman’s religion in America class. At Oxford, I attended lectures by Dr. Bruce Metzgar, another LVC alumni and who led the team that translated the Oxford Annotated Bible.

The Bible is not even close to being 2,000 years old. Some parts go back 6,000 years, and according to recent genetic discoveries, the oral histories might even go back another 6,000 years. The New Testament is closer to being 1,700 years old, and we even know who many of the authors were. None of them were anybody who might have known Jesus, if such a person existed in the Israel of the time.

I know you must have heard this one before, but one cannot prove the truth of a document without corresponding evidence. The Bible is very poor in corresponding evidence. Also, lack of disproof is not proof. In order to prove that God exists you also have to be able to present proof against existence, and since there is no proof of existence, there is no proof of non-existence, and with such a serious lack of proof on both sides, chances are, god is a delusion.

Okay so i stopped reading the comments about half way through because in the several years since this has been published this has turned into a shit throwing contest. However I felt it was right to throw in my own 2 cents. First of all, Guy Fawkes may have been used for V but it seems to be more out of the irony that Guy Fawkes day falls on a fifth. But I believe they are perfectly within their rights to do so regardless of historical accuracy. I think they but it best themselves with the line “Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover it up”. And further more while symbols are assigned meaning by us. Guy Fawkes face is a symbol and we as a society have chosen his face as a symbol of revolution. An art teacher I had said “art is giving something, anything new meaning”. They have simply, and in my opinion beautifully, given a symbol (in this case Guy Fawkes’s face) new meaning. They have taken the face of a man who in hindsight may have been an idiot, and turned it into a symbol to rally behind, in the name of fighting for freedom of speech. The reason you never see V’s face is not because he is supposed to be Guy Fawkes or live by all the same things he did. But rather because his mask is a physical representation of an idea.

If I told you hey Guy Fawkes’s face is the replacing the pedo-bear, and society decided to follow my idea and use it instead then that is what it becomes nothing more nothing less. Now mind you no one in the right mind would use it because it makes no sense which is where you are right in that symbols must have basis in reality but thats as far as it goes. V is perfect for they idea of revolutionaries because none of us are as strong as all of us.

Going more into the political side of things I honestly haven’t decided where I sit in the world of politics but honestly, I don’t understand why I should have to. And thats why I hate the government we have now and truly believe we need some sort of reform. Because unless you pick a side you have no voice.

And just to put it out there I am religious. I don’t believe it matters here what religion, but one of the reasons I love the idea of V is that he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for people he doesn’t know in the name of their ability to choose what religion they want. I agree in that ideal completely. I understand your an atheist, but I gladly stand and fight every day for your ability to make that choice whether I agree with your ideals or not.

Hi, Me, and welcome to A Penny For the Guy. Thank you for commenting and I hope you read enough to understand the contest. The 200th person to post will get a free e-copy of my upcoming novel. We have gone through two agents (I used the first up) and two publishers before deciding on a deal. So the more you post, the closer you are to winning.

On the whole I really admire your post. I think this is one of the most intelligent comments I’ve gotten yet, and I’m glad to have read it. But I do have to protest that you are confusing the movie with the real Guy Fawkes. The man could not care about all of us, he was purely a tool of the old aristocracy. You might say the old nobility went out with a bang after the Gunpowder Plot. I totally agree with you about art giving old symbols new meaning. In many ways I am doing the same with the book I’m working on now. At the same time, we need to have our feet ground in reality, and for that reason, I emphasize the actual history despite the myths created by the redoubtable Mr. Moore.

And I think that you miss the point of the atheist movement. The idea of you fighting for my ideals is terrifying to me, because you are doing so without looking at the evidence. Ideals without evidence to back them up is the reason that the US is a disaster. It comes down to the GIGO rule, Garbage in/Garbage out. Should one pursue ideals which the evidence shows to be utter garbage, the result will be garbage as well.

You misunderstand me then. I’m not confusing them. I admire V not Guy Fawkes. If they had have kept V exactly the same and used Lenin’s, or Marx’s, or anyone’s face for that matter, I wouldn’t care. Not because their views didn’t matter but rather because through Moore’s artistic liberty and societies consensus he has assigned Guy Fawke’s face a completely new meaning that is different from the man entirely.

I understand that completely, Me, and I admitted you have a damned good point. However, there are many who do not make the same logical distinctions you do. They confuse the Mask with the movie and the historic character. They cruise through life on surface comparisons, and then wonder why life keeps handing them their asses.

Honestly I can see why you(BILL) would question “Why use Guido “GUY” Fawkes likeness to demonstrate a rebellion against tyrannical leaders who take what they want from The masses by promising them prosperity or on the opposite spectrum Punishment. I would hope your mind is able to comprehend that in the eyes and minds of oppressed people they can relate to someone who is able to stand up to what seems like Giants. Your comment about Hitler being a revolutionary was dead on, HE WAS…..Not all revolutionaries have had good intentions for all…. when you tried to counter a post about how Guy Fawkes was referred to as a revolutionary you mentioned this. Its that type of rhetoric that keeps people in the dark about what is actually being done to them …… By trying to explain why someone is trying to break free from tyranny while wearing an aforementioned mask that resembles Guy Fawkes is clearly being counter productive to trying to help the movement ,if you do actually support it like you say you do. You would have been much more productive and accurate writing a post about why Obama isn’t good for anyone or why is Monsanto trying to mutate people ? You are that cog/wheel/gear in a machine that slips every now and then and throws the whole machine out of whack. It’s because of self loathing OLD farts like you who believe they know everything and have lived sooooo long because they tried hard at it that has allowed our rights over the years to be taken away by being complacent and quiet, by only typing little tiffs about their so called own movement on line late at night to get an arousal out of people , and try to feel superior over people. Your no better than any “KIDS” and are probably a coward at that willing to argue that you’ve “stood up to the man” and every other cliche you speak about being “CLICHE”. You for the record dont know shit, You must first realize that the history books wont ever fill you in on everything that happened for every event and is only written by the so called WINNERS, every little fact you regurgitate onto these blogs can be fallacies wrapped up in self adulation to appear to their own kind to have conquered evil when in fact THEY WERE EVIL AND THE OTHERS WHO WERE DEFEATED HAD BETTER MORALS AND WANTED BETTER FOR ALL NOT JUST FEW………. I hope everyone has a great day and can maybe put this one to rest . GUY FAWKES WAS A REVOLUTIONARY and even though BILL “THINKS” or “POSTULATES” or better “GUESSES” That this character doesnt deserve a spot in our REVOLUTION because he cant comprehend the links between devotion and duty to a revolutionary move- even though in this case a failed attempt, The REVOLUTION will still go on regardless of what TURD BURGLAR BILL “THINKS”/”GUESSES” …… PEACE

Hi, Guy, and welcome to “A Penny For The Guy” the most pointless discussion on the internet as well as being the most interesting and revealing. You are our 187th poster. Remember, the 200th guest to post will win an e-copy of my upcoming novel “The Adventures of Bernie Einstein CPA: The Girl of My Dreams. So post again. Next time you too will be one of our lucky winners.

I was feeling pretty good about the human race because of Me’s insightful and intelligent comments. Then I turn to you, and you threatened to ruin my whole day. Then in a case of cosmic synchronicity, “You’re Crazy” by Guns and Roses came around on my iPod and that just brought a smile to my face. Ever hear the expression Garbage In/ Garbage Out. It’s used by computer programmers but it also applies to real life and revolution. You bring Garbage into the revolution and all you get is garbage. Perhaps you might like to take a look at a later blog post called, “Dunlap’s Law”.

You have brought nothing into the discussion except personal attacks, or as we math types like to say, the ad homonem fallacy. As your entire post is based on a logical fallacy it has absolutely no truth and no basis in reality. You are not reacting to anything I actually said, but you are proving my premise, not just in “Penny for the Guy” but you are walking proof of “Dunlap’s Law”. Having no footing in consensual reality, you and your fellows are simply acting out you issues and the rest of the world suffers for it. You’re as responsible for Obama/Bush’s war crimes, Wall St’s thefts, and homelessness as the Tea Party. You are not dealing with reality, so you get in the way of the people who are actually trying to make a difference in the world.

Fortunately for us all, the Revolution is going on despite your interference. For the last six months I have watched in glee as the religious right continues to get their asses handed to them. It has been proven that this government is not the totalitarian regime your paranoia tells you it is, by Obama coming out in favor of same sex marriage. As Jimmy Breslin observed, all power is illusion, and we have seen the illusion shatter with the survival of planned parenthood and the many victories of the marriage equality movement. More important than that, is how everybody embraced the anti-bullying movement. That will have even more far reaching affects than the marriage equality movement. Someday soon it will become socially unacceptable to put a monster like Mitt Romney in positions of authority. That will be much more revolutionary than a bunch of assholes marching down the street in Guy Fawkes masks so the cops won’t recognize who’s smashing the store windows. Come to think of it, smashing store windows is a form of bullying.

i love Mitt and ther is undenyable proof that obama is a communist.and planned parenthood is disgusting.everything obama touches fails.i would rather have 8 more years with bush in office than 1 more day of that filthy dictator they call our president!

Hi, Thann. You are welcome to your opinion, and you are welcome to post them here. I may not agree with it. Obama is no socialist. I know this because I’m a socialist and I never saw him at any of the meetings. I have been enjoying watching the religious right getting their asses handed to them as they have over planned parenthood. I look forward to more such entertainment. Yes, Obama is a dictator who has murdered American Citizens without due process, and murdered many innocent Afghans with drones. However, he is not a socialist. Fascist, I would agree with but not socialist.

I did manage to read every post, however, including a few that resulted in me taking my dog for a walk, in order to facilitate a needed break, due to my lack of tolerance in regards to certain aspects of human interaction.

Before I make the following announcement, I have to say that I did read through all of the posts because this is an interesting discussion. Regardless of the span of time, it still remains a relative topic.

And you are indeed our lucky winner, Gerald. I am sorry that it took so long to approve your posts, but I’ve been very busy writing the novel. We are on deadline now, and as soon as it hits Amazon, you get an advanced copy. So please send me an email address to Oldman_Grumpy@yahoo.com, so I can send it to you.

And Gerald, I am glad it was you. Not only did I enjoy and agree with your posts, but I walk the dog when I need breaks too.

bottom line the mask was on sale lol but really affordable to most people and sexy according to several women when dressed accordingly.but mainly to remain anonymous in mass numbers,hence “strength thru unity”, yet remaining anonymous..its more of a mask representing the a group of people who were all involved from pictures ive seen looks like they all had the same disquises so to speak,personally think guy faulks got credit for the mask due to being the apparent main contributor…

Dude, don’t worry about it, the origin of the symbol is irrevelant, this particular mask has come to represent something and a wide range of people recognize it as the same symbol for the same thing. Your question is like asking why our symbol for a heart is shaped the way it is when it resembles anything but an anatomically accurate heart, there’s probably some lengthy historical explanation but it doesn’t matter, it is what it is. And stop being so hard headed. You asked a question and people are trying to answer you but you won’t accept any other explanation than your own.

Firstly, the protestant revolution in England wasn’t exactly a beacon of human rights. And I question the notion that it was preceeded by “papal tyranny” (unless you count not allowing kings to divorce women they don’t like “tyranny”).

Secondly, the mask and the celebration were indeed associated with counter-revolution: Anti-catholic revolution to be exact. Guy Fawkes night and the masks assoctiated with it came to prominence in the late 1800s as a form of protest against Catholic emancipation, the movement which attempted to secure equal rights and freedom of religion for Catholics in the British Isles.

The fact that the mask has been reappropriated as a mockery of that kind of xenophobia and a celebration of Guy Fawkes is entirely appropriate and a masterstroke by Moore.